Thomas Nast political cartoons

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Thomas Nast political cartoons

• Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall

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• What Are You Laughing At? To the Victor Belong
  the Spoils, Harpers Weekly, November 25, 1871,
  cover. Wood engraving.
•      The anti-Tammany campaign waged by the New
  York Times and Harpers Weekly damaged the
  Democratic machine, leaving a chastened William
  Magear Tweed in charge of a collapsing
  organization, symbolized by the ruined pillars
  and porticoes of his fortress. Boss Tweed, the
  beleaguered gladiator, pretends bravado,
  insisting that the spoilsin this case the
  treasury of New York Citystill goes to the
  victor, no matter how battered. Nasts cartoon is
  both a crow of victory and a warning that the
  battle is not finally won.

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• The Tammany Tiger Loose, Harpers Weekly,
  November 11, 1871, p.1056-1057.
•      In 1871 the Republican New York Times ran a
  scathing series of exposés of corruption in the
  Tammany Hall-controlled Democratic administration
  of New York City, and Harpers Weekly and Thomas
  Nast quickly joined the campaign. A bloodthirsty
  Tammany mascot has mauled the Republic,
  symbolized by Columbia,having broken her shield,
  the ballot, through corruption. The rotund
  emperor, Tammany Boss William Magear Tweed,
  enjoys the spectacle, sitting among
  otherwell-known Democratic politicians. The
  allusion to the historic slaughter of innocent
  Christians in Roman arenasRome now being the
  center of Catholicismwas particularly powerful,
  as was the way Nast drew the rampaging tiger
  looking directly at the reader, clearly its next
  victim.

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