Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 February 1918 — Birth of the Elephant. [ARTICLE]

Birth of the Elephant.

First use of the elephant as a symbol of the Republican party was in 1874, when Thomas Nast, the first of the celebrated political cartoonists of America, made the “ponderous pachyderm” the G. O. P. emblem. Nast was born in Bavaria September 27, 1940, and came to America at the age of six. In the early sixties he went to Italy and was with Garibaldi as an artist for British and American newspapers. As political cartoonist for a popular weekly, he achieved an international reputation, and his. cartoons were said to have been largely responsible for the downfall of the Tweed ring in New York? In 1874 Nast drew a cartoon representing an elephant labeled “Republican Party.” about to fall into a chasm. Niist also depicted the democratic party as a fox. but later the donkey was substituted by the cartoonist of opposite political faith, and this has been the democratic emblem ever since. Nast died in Ecuador in 1902.