How Democrats and Republicans Became Donkeys and Elephants

The opponents of Andrew Jackson had a nickname for him: “Jack-ass.” Perhaps it was a play on words from his last name or maybe it was simply as crude as one could get without being obscene. Either way, the name stuck throughout his presidency from 1829 to 1837.
Not only was the term used by his fellow political adversaries, but also members of the press who disliked his policies. Political cartoonists drew the president either riding a donkey or taking the form of one. In fact, for a brief period of time, Jackson attempted to use the insult to his advantage by suggesting he did have the traits of a donkey, such as stubbornness in the face of political opposition.
Although Jackson was the face of the Democratic Party, it was in his final year as president that New York lithographer Henry R. Robinson illustrated the party itself as a donkey. Robinson was a supporter of the Whig Party, a party formed in 1834 in direct opposition to Jackson. Over the next two decades, the Whig Party had some success, including winning two presidential elections with William Henry Harrison in 1840 and Zachary Taylor in 1848. These two presidencies, however, could hardly be considered successful since Harrison died of pneumonia a month into office and Taylor lasted less than 18 months before his death.
Nast exhibited an artistic gift at an early age and was enrolled in the National Academy of Design at the age of 12. Three years later, he was hired as an artist by Frank Leslie, who had migrated from London in 1848.
Leslie was a newspaperman who had worked for the London Illustrated News, a British newspaper that greatly influenced illustrations of America’s press. On Dec. 15, 1855, Leslie published the first issue of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper—its last issue published in 1922.
Harper’s Weekly continued to grow, reaching upwards of 100,000 subscribers during the war. This number doubled during presidential election cycles. During the 1864 presidential election, which witnessed the reelection of Abraham Lincoln, Nast was busy promoting the Union, Lincoln, and the Republican Party. One of his most powerful illustrations was called “Compromise With the South,” published on Sept. 3, 1864, in an effort to combat the defeatist attitude that seemed to plague Republicans and Lincoln concerning the upcoming election.
It was the Union press’s way of intimating how the Confederates must have felt after the string of military losses that would eventually lead to their surrender. When Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, surrendered on April 3, 1865, “Father Abraham” marched the elephant out again, with the bootless pachyderm carrying a banner that read “Victory! Victory!! Victory!!!”
Six days later, Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox. Five days after the Confederacy’s surrender, Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre and died the following day. Nast completed illustrations of the fall of Richmond and the surrender at Appomattox. The latter falling on the weekend of Palm Sunday, Nast made allegorical use of the religious observance with the death of Lincoln.
In those intervening years, Nast made his greatest political impact with his political cartoons attacking the notorious New York Democrat and political boss, William “Boss” Tweed. Nast, who illustrated Tweed’s corruption of Tammany Hall as the “Tammany Tiger,” proved so successful that during the height of his anti-Tweed cartoon campaign, subscription to Harper’s Weekly reached its highest at 300,000. Also, Tweed, feeling the pinch of this negative publicity, offered Nast $500,000 (approximately $13 million today) to stop. Nast refused the bribe, and Tweed was finally arrested and convicted of fraud. Nast’s illustrations came in handy again when Tweed escaped to Spain. People recognized Tweed’s face due to Nast’s drawings, the Spanish authorities arrested Tweed and returned him to America.
Although the Democrat Party was represented by a fox, the Herald, which accused Grant of “Caesarism” for possibly pursuing a third term, was the Democrat Party mouthpiece. The idea for the illustration stemmed from Aesop’s Fable “The Ass in the Lion’s Skin.”
For this cartoon, and the following seven Nast created, neither the elephant nor the donkey specifically represented the Republican or Democratic Party. Nonetheless, from this point forward the political correlation became inseparable. Although the donkey—or jackass—was initially a point of derision, it has been used, just as with the elephant for the Republicans, as a positive and endearing symbol.