 The Democratic Donkey |
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When
Andrew
Jackson
ran for
President
in 1828,
his
opponents
tried to
label
him a
“Jackass”
for his
populist
views
and his
slogan,
“Let the
people
rule”.
Jackson,
however,
picked
up on
their
name
calling
and
turned
it to
his own
advantage
by using
the
donkey
on his
campaign
posters.
During
his
presidency,
the
donkey
was used
to
represent
Jackson’s
stubbornness
when he
vetoed
re-chartering
the
National
Bank.
The
first
time the
donkey
was used
in a
political
cartoon
to
represent
the
Democratic
Party
was,
again,
in
conjunction
with
Jackson.
Although
in 1837
Jackson
was
retired,
he still
thought
of
himself
as the
Party’s
leader
and was
shown
trying
to get
the
donkey
to go
where he
wanted
it to
go. The
cartoon
was
titled
“A
Modern
Baalim
and his
Ass”.
Interestingly
enough,
the
person
credited
with
getting
the
donkey
widely
accepted
as the
Democratic
Party’s
symbol
probably
had no
knowledge
of
the
prior
associations.
Thomas
Nast,
a famous
political
cartoonist,
came to
the
United
States
with his
parents
in 1840
when he
was six.
He first
used the
donkey
in the
1870
Harper’s
Weekly
cartoon
to
represent
the
“Copperhead
Press”
kicking
a dead
lion,
symbolizing
Lincoln’s
Secretary
of War
Edwin M.
Stanton,
who had
recently
died.
Nast
intended
the
donkey
to
represent
an
anti-war
faction
with
whom he
disagreed,
but the
symbol
caught
the
public’s
fancy
and the
cartoonist
continued
using it
to
indicate
some
Democratic
editors
and
newspapers.
Later,
Nast
used the
donkey
to
portray
what he
called
“Caesarism”
showing
the
alleged
Democratic
uneasiness
over a
possible
third
term for
Ulysses
S.
Grant.
In
conjunction
with
this
issue,
Nast
helped
associate
the
elephant
with the
Republican
Party.
Although
the
elephant
had been
connected
with the
Republican
Party in
cartoons
that
appeared
in 1872,
it was
Nast’s
Cartoon
in 1874
published
by
Harper’s
Weekly
that
made the
pachyderm
stick as
the
Republican’s
symbol.
By
1880 the
donkey
was
well-established
as a
mascot
for the
Democratic
Party. A
Cartoon
about
the
Garfield-Hancock
campaign
in the
New York
Daily
Graphic
showed
the
Democratic
candidate
mounted
on a
donkey,
leading
a
procession
of
crusaders.
Over the
years,
the
donkey
and
elephant
have
become
the
acceptedsymbols
of the
Democratic
and
Republican
parties.
Although
the
Democrats
have
never
officially
adopted
the
donkey
as a
party
symbol,
we have
used
various
donkey
designs
on
publications
over the
years.
The
republicans
have
actually
adopted
the
elephant
as their
official
symbol
and use
the
design
widely.
Adlai
Stevenson
provided
one of
the most
clever
descriptions
of the
Republican’s
symbol
when he
said,
“The
elephant
has a
thick
skin, a
head
full of
ivory,
and as
everyone
who has
seen a
circus
parade
knows,
proceeds
best by
grasping
the tail
of its
predecessor”.