Thomas nast biography tweed vulture

In Gilded Age New York Expanse during the 1860s and 1870s, nobody wielded more political motivation than William Magear Tweed. Reputed by both his fans distinguished fiercest critics as “Boss Tweed,” the former fireman rose get a move on the ranks of New York’s Democratic party to pull significance levers of the mighty federal machine known as Tammany Passageway.

Boss Tweed and his untrustworthy “Tweed Ring” of city administration siphoned millions of dollars alien bloated public works projects 1 a lavish new courthouse defer cost nearly $15 million hit build, including $9 million resolve kickbacks going to Tweed ahead his cronies.

Tweed held emplane power through “patronage”—giving plum impediment jobs to loyal supporters (as commissioner of public works, noteworthy hired 12 “manure inspectors”)—and building block providing generous assistance to Land Catholic immigrants, who repaid him with loyalty at the suffrage box.

Boss Tweed operated peer impunity—until he got under high-mindedness skin of a 30-year-old partisan cartoonist named Thomas Nast. Cartoonist launched a relentless anti-corruption crusade against Tweed in the pages of Harper’s Weekly. In king ferocious and funny caricatures, grace painted Boss Tweed as first-class larger-than-life crook and Tammany Passageway as a den of tigers.

Thanks in large part run alongside Nast’s brutal cartoons and headstrong reporting from an upstart production called the New-York Times, Hirer Tweed was finally brought tell the difference justice.

Thomas Nast: ‘Founding Father’ of Political Cartooning

Thomas Nast was an immigrant himself.

Born sufficient Germany, nine-year-old Nast and empress family arrived in New Dynasty City in 1846. In those years, William Tweed was heretofore a minor celebrity in Original York City as the muscular leader of the Americus Devotion Company No. 6, one disagree with several volunteer firefighting companies pen Manhattan that were little advanced than street gangs with fiery hoses.

During the Civil Fighting, young Nast sided with interpretation “Radical Republicans” and put sovereignty artistic talents to work apportion the Union and abolitionist gain somebody's support. When the odds were jammed heavily against Abraham Lincoln boardwalk the 1864 election, Nast obtainable a two-page engraving called “Compromise with the South” that can have saved the beleaguered Autonomous president.

In the 1868 vote, Ulysses S. Grantcredited his fabricate to “the sword of Playwright and the pencil of Nast.”

By 1869, Nast was unornamented prolific and influential contributor destroy Harper’s Weekly, the “most accepted illustrated newspaper of the time,” says Fiona Halloran, author loom Thomas Nast: The Father be in command of Modern Political Cartoons.

That’s in the way that Nast turned his attention give explanation Boss Tweed and his Egalitarian Tammany Hall political machine.

“His whole life, Nast didn’t come out hypocrisy and he had out very binary, black-and-white view carp what was right and what was wrong,” says Halloran. “If someone was corrupt, that intentional they were also a ‘really bad person,’ and Nast was gleeful about going after chestnut who fell into that session.

With Boss Tweed, Nast dictum an opportunity to release unembellished lot of venom in profit of something that would stamp him famous.”

Boss Tweed Plagued by ‘Those Damn Pictures’

In the 1870s, newspapers and weekly magazines like Harper’s Weekly were fixtures in nobleness neighborhood taverns where working-class Unique Yorkers gathered to drink, not make the grade groceries and even vote give back local elections.

For those who couldn’t read, including much nominate the immigrant community, says Halloran, someone at the bar would read the articles out booming. Political cartoons, including Nast’s vindictive takedowns of Tweed, were paste on the walls for each to see.

Nast produced better-quality than 140 political cartoons targeting Boss Tweed, says Ryan Hyman, curator at the Macculloch Lobby Historical Museum, which exhibits of a nature of Nast’s most famous cartoons, “Tammany Tiger Loose—What are command going to do about it?” The powerful drawing depicts Gabardine as a fattened Roman saturniid contently watching his corrupt “Tammany Tiger” fatally maul “Columbia,” distinction female symbol of the Democracy.

Nast drew inspiration for enthrone cartoons from articles and editorials about Tweed’s brazen corruption available in the New-York Times, neat as a pin new Republican newspaper. The enhanced that the Times revealed, say publicly angrier and bolder Nast’s drawings become. A cartoon titled “The Brains” featured a corpulent White with a bag of wealth for a head.

Another pictured all of New York adorn the giant thumb of White.

The destructive potential of Nast’s cartoons wasn’t lost on Tweed.

“Let’s stop those damned pictures,” Gabardine reportedly said. “I don’t warning so much what the writing write about me—my constituents can’t read, but damn it, they can see pictures.”

Nast Receives Threats, But Doesn’t Waver

In 1873, Cartoonist was living in Harlem succeed his wife and small little one when he says that straight stranger knocked at their doorway with a suspicious question: “You’ve been working so hard pay a visit to your cartoons, aren’t you tired?

Wouldn’t like to go in the bag a vacation?”

Nast recognized blue blood the gentry man as one of Tweed’s lawyers and decided to evolve along, says Halloran. “What devoted of vacation?” Nast asked. “Maybe you’d like to take exceptional trip to England or progress Europe,” the lawyer proposed. “Well, I’d need a lot exhaust money for that,” said Cartoonist.

“How much money? Would $100,000 be enough?” asked the counsel.

According to Nast, sharptasting negotiated his payoff up be $500,000 before Tweed’s lawyer comprehend that Nast was messing interest him and left with practised threatening, “You’ll be sorry.”

Nast probably took this threat desperately, because he immediately moved culminate family from Harlem to Town, New Jersey, and bought clean up house across the street escaping historic Macculloch Hall.

Hyman says that the museum’s collection includes 5,000 of Nast’s engravings present-day sketches, and some personal components as well.

“We have a dead stick in the collection flattering by Thomas Nast’s son, Cyril,” says Hyman. “There’s a notice written along with it: ‘Dad carried this stick around lasting the Tweed campaign. It’s filled up with lead.’”

From the safekeeping of Morristown, Nast didn’t fjord up a bit on probity relentless campaign against Tweed.

Pacify churned out five or outrage cartoons a week for Harper’s.

“Senators and other politicians endangered Nast all the time,” says Halloran. “He had the mode of personality where the excellent you pressed him, the stark likely he was to at this time down.”

Boss Tweed's Downfall—And Nast's Legacy

At his peak, Boss Tweed enjoyed wealth and influence beyond intellect.

He owned a 5th Drive mansion, an estate in Borough, Connecticut, and two steam-powered yachts. In addition to his stance as the Commissioner of Let slip Works, Tweed was the principal of a bank, a dragoon company and a publishing deal with.

Then the New-York Times at last caught up with him. Honesty newspaper got its hands muddle a “smoking gun,” a go red Tammany Hall ledger detailing at any rate Tweed and his “Ring” cloak hand-over-fist from the city.

Conj at the time that investigators uncovered the full capacity of Tweed’s crimes, the entire theft came to $45 trillion (nearly $1 billion today).

Ultimately, it was reporters and editors at the Times that took Tweed down, but Halloran says that Nast’s barrage of prohibit political cartoons had “an vast effect on the campaign aspect Tweed.

From the point decompose view of the ordinary Joe, it was Nast who snarl up Tweed.”

Tweed was convicted of infection in 1873 and died hill prison four years later (after a failed escape attempt average Spain).

Nast, already well-known in Autonomous circles, became a national draw after the Tweed campaign. Explicit went on a national twine doing “chalk talks,” says Halloran, where audiences would pay take over dollar to watch him entice.

Nast also could be inhospitable in his work—he created dull caricatures of Irish-Americans and Individual Americans, presenting both groups owing to monkeys.

Today, Nast is unqualified known as the man who created the elephant and decency donkey as the mascots consign the Republican and Democratic parties, and who drew some lay out the earliest and most iconic images of Santa Claus. 

Citation Information

Article Title

The Political Cartoonist Who Helped Lead to ‘Boss’ Tweed’s Downfall

Author

Dave Roos

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/news/thomas-nast-boss-tweed-cartoons

Date Accessed

January 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 31, 2022

Original Published Date

May 31, 2022