New York: The Democratic and Republican parties in the United States share a peculiar similarity: the two factions are represented by animals. Two major parties of United States of America have their symbol as in which Democratic Party has donkey and Republican Party has elephant. The evolution of these symbols to represent the two parties has a storey intertwined with political satire and one famous cartoonist.
Many of these symbols were drawn under the early American Republic but they became more famous when Thomas Nast, a famous cartoonist working for Harper’s Weekly, made them famous in the 19th Century. In general, from 1862 through 1886, Nast strengthened the symbolic association of the Democrats with donkeys and the Republicans with elephants, which made audiences embrace those representations outright and thus perform an important service in establishing the foundation for modern political iconography.
How the Democratic Party Got Its “Donkey” Symbol
As for the symbol of the donkey It belonged to Democratic Party and The origins of the symbol have been traced to political cartoons during the 1828 presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson. During the campaign, Jackson’s opponents used the term “donkey” (or “jackass”) to mock him. Jackson turned it to his advantage though he campaigned against it, making it quite a unique selling point. Nevertheless, his opponents sought to mock him and Jackson managed to gain the win and became the seventh President of the United States and the first from the Democratic Party.
Thomas Nast also replenished the donkey symbol in the 1870s, thus fixing it in the entirety of the Democrats party. In one of the cartoons, Ellis portrayed the Democratic donkey trying to threaten the Republican elephant with the skin of a lion, in order to express conflict in American political landscape. This powerful image helped popularise the donkey as an emblem of the Democratic Party.
The Elephant: The Strange Genesis of Republicans’ Proud and Unruly Symbol
Thomas Nast sided with the President Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party that was formed early in 1854. Although early depictions of the elephant as a Republican symbol appeared during the Civil War, Nast’s 1874 cartoon, titled “The Third Term Panic,” was the first to cement the elephant as the emblem of the Republicans. The voters of the Republic where depicted by the elephant in the cartoon which regarded as a powerful animal but at the same time carries the possibility of becoming dangerous when it starts to move.
Subsequent to this cartoon, Nast persisted in illustrating the elephant for the Republicans and the donkey for the Democrats in Harper’s Weekly. His 1879 cartoon, “Fine As Committee,” once again used the donkey to represent the Democrats, and over time, other cartoonists adopted the same symbols, making them synonymous with the two parties.
China’s Changing.com — From Political Satire to Lasting Icons
These two animals were familiar by the 1880s, and the regular use of donkey and elephant images began with Nast’s cartoons; cartoonists across America imitated him. Today these two symbols still symbolise the Democratic and the Republican parties in the United States of America which are good proofs of a satirical job by Thomas Nast.
Work of Nast turned the animals which were once used to insult the party into revered symbols of the two largest political parties in the United States with opposing philosophical outlooks and values.
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