coming up next fiona deans halloran recounts the life of political cartoonist thomas nast a regular contributed to harvest weekly. mr. nast made popular elephants as the symbol of the democratic and republican party. this is about 40 minutes.

[inaudible conversations] >> good evening. welcome to the sylvan historical society. i am mark wetherington and i thank you for joining us for i know what will be a interesting program "thomas nast" the father of modern political cartoons with dr. fiona deans halloran. and i want to thank you for being here. i was remarking this was the first time i can embed in a while that we had sunshine only started this evening's program so i appreciate you coming in and being with us. our mission is to tell the significant story of the ohio valley region and culture in a part of that culture and political culture are cartoons. we have a really nice cartoon collection here. we have one example of a nascar sand that -- cartoon better speaker might have time to point to later and we will see and we have any additional questions

are curator of the special collections can bring you up to speed. if you are not a member of the filter and we would love to have you join us. wherever private nonprofit historical society. we would appreciate your membership. this is the commercial part of our program and i will now move along to why you were here. i want to thank c-span for being here and also again a number of students from presentation academy and i believe trinity so we always welcome you and thank you very much for joining us. dr. fiona deans halloran is the department chair of u.s. history and ap history teacher at roland halls st. mark's school in salt lake city. prior to her position dr. holleran was an assistant professor at kentucky university and a visiting assistant professor of dade college. she earned her b.a. at american university and a ph.d. in american history and the

university of california. she has been a research fellow at the huntington library and an american institute university scholar. in addition to thomas nast the father of modern political cartoons she has contributed to europe working since 1789 encyclopedia of early american world. dr. heller published numerous essays including shall i trust trust -- and fathers preachers rebels u.s. history and literature 1820s to 1825 and propose everything opposed nothing but political cartoons of thomas nast and drawing the line in cartoons and history. please join me in welcoming dr. holleran to the filson. [applause] >> thank you.

thank you. thank you mark and thank you ald scott for helping to make this possible and to help answer any questions especially scott and jay my very closest friends. they told me to stop worrying. that was very fact fifth. before begin i would like to mention the image on your right because it's not actually cartoons but it's a particular charming a sample from something nast did all.all the time which is a thank you note. thomas had a tendency to draw himself as he is done here is a short tubby and unkempt. he loved to draw facial hair and he has written this little note saying the family of henry watterson the editor of the local paper for welcoming him and he did that all the time. partly because he really liked

it imperfect because having grown up in new york city he was not capable of writing -- so if his wife was unable to do it for him and she would write almost everything you would see, she couldn't do it for him he didn't do it. his spelling was german phonetic accent spelling and his handwriting can only be described as -- so people often want to know how i came to write about thomas nast and it's a story that originated in graduate school in california where i was contributing material for an encyclopedia being being produced by mike by zerneck chose his name off of the list thinking it would be entertaining. then when i went to look for material about him i couldn't find any i thought i'm the worlds worst graduate student and they should shoot took me out. i called my advisor and i said i don't know what i'm going to do.

she said let me look and she called me back and said no it's fine. it's not you, there is nothing. so it turns out that what he did at that time was a biography published in 1904 by alfred payne a writer for a children's magazine and to this was his big break was writing this book. there was a picture book to martin keller published in 1958 which has wonderful text but approximately 57 pages of the so that's not enough. and then there is quite an odd book but a great book if you're interested in eccentricity published in the mid-90s by roger fisher which is both a book about nixon and a book about nast's campaign so if you can imagine that. [laughter] it's not the usual book but it is really an interesting book when you get around that and then there are a few very good ones. so it seemed like a good idea to

write about him as a dissertation topic in a way to bring his life back and provide him with a historical legacy which i think he deserved and he has not enjoyed. as it turns out it has been a fascinating way to spend a decade and this made me a tiny bit evangelical on the subject of nast. i will introduce you to briefly can briefly so you have the sense if you don't know the basics of his life. he was born in 1840 and went out which of the time part of bavaria. he immigrated to the u.s. in 1946 with his mother arriving in new york city. he was not a great student. he arrived precisely at the moment you would become literate except that he was expected to perform in the language -- for example is mother enrolled him and he went to school on the first day. a little boy directed him to align and it turned out it was a thinking mind.

he went home and said to his mother i'm never going back to school. by 13 he was basic lay on the streets every day. the result of which was that at 15 he gave up entirely on the dissertation and talked his way into a job with an impresario of the illustrated press. this is his drawing of himself doing that and you can see all we see like to draw himself a short and heavy and not terribly defined. so he worked first for franklin and then much longer for harpers both of which were dueling banjo so to speak of illustrated newspapers in the late 1850s and the late 1870and primarily moved because he didn't like to pay. at harvard he built a career that catapulted him into fame and fortune for a while and an enduring art history and

political history and in his prime he was the most famous cartoonist in the united states. he produced not just cartoons with illustrations for harvard weekly until the age of 80. the illustrations from the civil war are specially famous down this is one of the illustrations he produced which depicts the attack on a border town by guerrilla fighters so what's great about this drawing is they are doing every bad thing you can imagine. they are drinking and they commit vandalism and hanging a baby outside down by his ankles. they killed somebody's poppy and people are being bayoneted. unfortunately his career ended not so much with a bang but with a whimper in the frantic pace with which he produced cartoons particularly in early 1870. he began to wear out his arm and shoulder that he true with and as a kwonta consequence had to stop pretending for a while several times. he also has worked again to

decline. it was less detailed and people started to move onto other cartoonist who'd a thought were better. then after a conflict with his editor and publisher of "harper's" weekly he began to feel various dissatisfied with his position at the newspaper. in the 1880s he returned his contract unless forget. he tried to maintain his career by working for other papers and failed. he tried to build a career as a painter and failed. he tried to establish his own paper called the nast weekly and that also failed. and finally the only complete collection is at the university of minnesota's archives and when you read it -- finally he turned to his connections in theater roosevelt administration. roosevelt had worked for -- and nast knew him. so he called the roosevelt

administration metaphorically speaking looking for some diplomatic signature that would help him pay his house elves and give him an honor and -- honorable retirement. he got an appointment in july of 1902 only to contract yellow fever and be dead by december. so it did not in the end work out the way he had hoped. when it comes to the nast's legacy something we like to talk about a lot he's famous for three things. primarily first for the popularization of the elephant and the donkey assembles at the democratic and republican party. he did not originate the use of the donkey. that predated him by decades because of his association with another word that i won't say but i'm sure you know. he didn't go link the elephant to the republican party and that connection he exploited quite frequently as part of the larger symbolic world that he filled

with lions and lambs in dogs and people as animals and animals as people, whatever animals he used at the moment were likely to appear. he is also famous second for his drawings of santa claus which are truly charming. not so much this one. this is one of the earliest ones he drew during the civil war. he started produced christmas drawings to go in "harper's" holiday edition, usually the first paper of january because the paper appeared almost a week before so the last of the december would be dated the first of january and those really all it to holiday word life with sentiment. santa has arrived and is distributing toys to the drummer boys and giving out items of comfort to the soldiers. it was very sentimental and patriotic in his recognition of the need for cheers. later the drawings tended to

veer more completely to a family-oriented -- be a few find it overwhelming these are typical of the later ones where family was part of it and he helped to create the christmas was which we are all familiar works did not preexist. that is it starts to develop any team 40s and prior to that christmas was a very different holiday but it comes in this period around the civil war to the home oriented and child -- this jolly bearded sometimes pikes smoking gift laden person. and nast was a big part of the creation of those images. you can see them doing that here. that is the children and the kids you seen the pictures. if you go year-by-year there will be more more children. that is how that works and they often sometimes surprisingly --

so nast's children are seen in the drawing and they often were the center of demonstrating the value of christmas in the social meaning of christmas so they are the ones waiting 10 plays and christmas morning and they're the ones who wake up to the presence and they are the ones who are placed before rolling fire with stockings and things like that. he was a great lover of family and he incorporated that into his work by putting these children in his own home. many of the backgrounds are his own home filled with his stuff which he loved to collect stuff. just an incredible collector. he would go to things like the centennial and buy everything in sight. a suit of armor? anyone. he bought a whole staircase. okay. christmas drawings by nast are

sold today. that's the drawings of the library of congress coloring book which i happened upon when i happened to these in d.c. looking something for my son and i thought, nast is talking to me. this on the lower left is played that you could buy from williams-sonoma. there is nothing like nast's santa and the others are christmas ornaments available through sophie really like the santa illustrate shins -- the third thing that cemented his reputation of course was his crusade against tweet. tweet oversaw the democratic political machine in new york out of tammany hall of building which the machine was called by the name of the book and he was the face really of corruption for those americans who are most concerns about reformer politics and reticular late in the cities

which was a significant of session in the 19th century among protestant reformers. fast until he became embroiled in this crusade wasn't terribly and stressed it. he was to the extent that he lived in the city and there were some things he had commented on the fourth of two clearly swilled milk which was the selling of tainted milk that was trucked in and it was from sick cows and it could make people very sick and sometimes would kill children. he participated in an effort to's stamp that out but he was very interested in national politics and the republican party and not super focused on new york's political machine. but when "the new york times", brand-new paper and so it's kind of entertaining to see the scandal but does everyone think it's the paper the moment but in

fact they were the scrappy underdog. they initiated and investigating on city projects overseen by tammany hall and nast joined them as the illustrator of some of the quotes they were trying to make in his cartoons ultimately were as important some ways is the evidence produced by whistleblowers because the cartoons help to show the ways tammany was skimming funds off of these government contracts in the visual evidence in the cartoons was unmistakable. anyone could understand it which was the famous complaint by the loss tweed so obviously this is not complicated. even a person who is illiterate knows what is happening here. he always wore a fixed time -- diamond stick pin. he was greedy for more and totally and repenting so the tiger bares its fangs and says what is going to do about a? that was all of tweed his position was and is hard to see in the scam but tweed is on the left in the stands watching with

satisfaction. tweed rejected the idea that anything could touch him for quite a while during the scandal and nast got more and more forward in his descriptions of what was wrong with the server server and corruption in why people should care about it even when it benefited them in a short-term way. and one of the -- so they're portrayed like folgers and the caption says they are waiting for the storm to blow over which of course is the scandal. on the right is a very famous cartoon produced many times where it it says who stole the money and they say it was him, it was him. produce a decade ago during the enron scandal when "the new york times" would run this bottom once is it just that no one was willing to take responsibility. combined with nast's work and the presidential campaigns where he championed the u.s. grants

these cartoons from the tweed campaign really made his reputation and really launched him into fame on on a level that he had never anticipated that we welcomed it warmly. but these are the things for which everybody already is interested in nast and i will suggest he have to be famous at least in part for three other things. the first is that he insisted in his lifetime that people treat him as an artist. he was trained as a painter and when he dropped out of school what he started to do was go into museums and paint paintings he thought were interesting and managed to talk his way into a couple of quasi-jobs. he found a private institution and convince the guy to let him take the fees at the door and keep part of it as like a job. then he would sit there and paint the paintings any thought this is pretty great for 14-year-old. he had this training and he produced oil paintings his whole life, sketches and drawings and

watercolors and he displayed them exhibited them and try to sell them. he really wanted people to understand that part of him as an artist and he worked as an illustrator consistently throughout his career. sometimes satirical. he made fun of confederate crossroads in kentucky but he also did lots of folks with dickens and lots of other books which were not intended to be funny. it was really illustrating the story. he was not a modest man. he reveled in the fame that cartooning provided but he also thought of himself as an artist and the thought just because his work in politics does not mean that was not a form of fine art so he asserted a connection between artists who appeared in newspapers and art as it appeared in issues. i think many cartoonists today have to figure out what to do a in addition to political meaning.

second for wet t. should be known as and i have a picture, he insisted that people in his life here is the owner of harvard's weekly and his editor offered them the respect as a political thinker in his own right. he was not an employee. as a young man he learned how to do what he did, he tested his gifts under the leadership the tutelage of the man on the upper left, one of the harper brothers who founded harper brothers and harper publishing now harper & row one of the first important publishing houses in the united states helped to create a domestic market for books. fletcher was the baby of the family and he founded "harper's" is his pet project. each of the brothers have it and he supervised him personally. by the late 1860s the support of fletcher harpring seems to have treated nast much like a son certainly beginning in the

office. that support helped nast to become an independent contributor to "harper's" weekly he had an idea he just drew it and if other contributors including the planned political editor george curtis dislike deposition that was just too bad. eventually after fletcher harbert stefan 1877 nast lost the battle. he struck at nast to force him to knuckle under to whatever curtis liked. dass tried again to fight back without fletcher harbert support support -- fletcher harper support. he did succeed in building a position that allowed him to decide what he would portray and how he would portray it in but he would say about it so if he does it read with the line that the paper was as a whole than that is how it was and that

independence helped to establish thim for the work that cartoonists do. of course it's not the last battle between editors and contributors but he used his celebrity to make the point that editors understand the political world in a unique way and they can't be understood to be employees nor can their talents be harnessed to the ideas of an editor. so he made a big deal to the public about how you couldn't just call them up and say send them a letter. and say wouldn't it be funny? you should do this. there are stories about him doing that in responding but most the time -- the third of the things people ought to know about him is that he was at the center of a really complicated web of interconnected 19th century figures including james redpath on the upper right and just bear with me because i know people are saying it wasn't nast.

this is a man who thought for kansas in 18 50's and britvan did and defended number of the first biography of john brown represented haiti in a scheme to attract african-american immigrants travel to the south under pseudonym before the civil war reporting on slavery abdicated irish home rule and became the leader in new york attempt to create an integrated school system in charleston south carolina and after that -- in the civil war. but there is more. how to edit autobiographies of jefferson and carina davis published it early works of the lisa may escott and found that the most famous lyceum bureau in 19th century america. not bad, right? that is how nast met him. redpath acted as an agent for many the most famous lectures at

the time including henry ford preacher and mark twain. redpath are only originated to managemenmanagemen t system for lecturing which made it profitable for the the lecture and therefore brought more people into it and made it more professional but personally identify speakers and saw their participation so in nast casey chased them down. redpath found out that nast was getting on a ship for england and and a cot on the same boat. what was nast going to what was nast going to do do jump off? >> nast and talks to him in the end desperate effort to get them to go away said he convinced my wife which is always the shutdown. redpath jumps off at the next port goes back to the laura's town and talk sandy -- sally into it. this is a fascinating person who nast knew very well and through whom nast knew off of other people. nast is friends with his wife's cousin. james parton was a noted

biographer widely read a influential essayist. he wrote lives of aaron burr pulled terry and her checksum benjamin franklin and thomas jefferson in addition to being a full-time writer for newspapers and his wife who sudanese was an essayist in her own right. she had built her career from the ashes of her early private life despite her family's disapproval and she went on to be an early feminist and abolitionist and influence nast in his 20s. one of these things you see defending friedman is the implements of this woman that his wife disapproved of but who was strong-willed and were lifelong friends of mr. nast and made all these points about equality and justice. that horse i assume you know the gym at the bottom another client of james redpath.

mark twain was part of a wide network of humorous and the two men constantly send each other funny letters. twain went on to higher nast's biographer his own biography and initiated a friendship. the twain papers as we know them or produce by albert bigelow paine whose came to no twain through nast and that worst nast was u.s. grant. in some ways grand is the most important influence on nast aside from his wife sally. the cartoon was idealized. he loved general grant and helped get him elected president twice. nast goes to the white house but he also had a true and tender affection for granted as a man and they occasionally entertain one another so president grant

came to moorsetown and after grants world tour so when and if his presidency the one on the world tour and everyone was excited to see it. he gets home and comes to dinner in morristown and nast says sally wants to know what you want for dinner and grant said if he knew would have been served me all around the world, all i want is corned beef and cabbage. evidently he was very satisfied. that is a lot of people that you didn't come to hear about but so what right? is wide circle of friends of which this is a tiny sample helps to demonstrate the way the 19th century networks operated humorist to writer to editor to activist to shoeman and on from there. and the way in nast did at the center of some of these networks he knew interesting people.

he knew important people and he incorporated everything, the news that a red the world around him and the ideas of his friends into the work you produce so understanding him and the 19th century requires understanding that all these people related in various complicated ways. thomas nast is you can see was very entertaining. he was friends with this photographer in new york and i guess they used to have photo sessions where they would dress up. so it was interesting he was like i need a blanket and a rough. okay. he is a fun person to spend time with then there's the great story from "harper's" about how one of the harpers came home from the office and walked in. he walks in the vestibule and he asked his housekeeper what it

was. apparently nast had come to. >> with him but since he was in wasn't home had snuck up to the nursery and were leading the children on a game of chase through the house which was generating earthquake level noise. he was very entertaining. thomas nast died broke. he died relatively young at 62 years old. today his work survives primarily in glimpses. there will be a shot of his work and a shot of santa on a dessert plate. there will be a repurposed image of one of his tweed cartoons in the financial pages at some point. and that is partly because he left the world, left his wife and family with almost nothing. his wife had to auction his belongings in several auctions in 1906, seven and eight in order to make ends meet ends meet and choose will this correspondence and his collection of stuff. as a result there's basically no large collection of nast

materials anywhere. the biggest ones are places like the huntington library were there in 91 items some of which are repetitive. they will have two copies of the inventory of the stuff when he died and if you are riveted by how many easels someone on when they died that is for you that if you have questions about why he -- bought some things that's just not going to cut it. there's just not a lot out there and it's a shame because his limited legacy is in part a reflection not of the power of his penciled but the power of documentation in history. if you die without money, if you die unexpectedly if you let your papers scattered to the wind then you may sacrifice her legacy to the historical fashion and i think nast deserved better than that so i came in the course of writing the book to hope that somehow it would help to restore him to the center of our understanding of the 19th century art lease to a position more in keeping with the

significance to our shared history. thank you. [applause] i think there was an intent for questions and answers. there there is? marks the cso in the anyone has a question. >> the farmers were probably mostly moralists and what about the bosses like loss tweed and pendergast and michael curley and honey fitz? didn't they serve a useful social purpose for the emigrantd entertainment and so forth? >> as immigration spike to fill the cities with emigrants from a

friday places in one of the ways the communities got access to political power to a voice in the governance and the place where they lived was by dominating the politics of the cities and yes it was a symbiotic relationship. the political machine rewarded ordinary people with jobs and the ability to complain if something wasn't right. and with access to some of the money flowing in from various sources. people who oppose that tended to come from the native-born protestant and the elite and they absolutely dislike the idea that immigrants and often catholic citizens would have that much power in a city so one of the discussions that have swirled around this tweed ring in particular but around all of that is to what extent do you want to see see the reformers as obnoxious do-gooders because they'll get to have their say all the time and to what extent is it true and and a t. matchews

sense that people like tweed were corrupt and that is bad in and of itself and therefore that he had to go and so people find a position they find most congenial. as i say they say in nast was aware of it of coors put one of the things about nast was he god on his bad side. if you irritate him or poked at him a big mistake to cause you don't want a dragon to turn its attention to you. up until a certain point, tweed made the mistake according to nast of sending a lawyer to speak to him who lives in harlem and it was a village at the time. this fellow came by and said mr. nast this is unfortunate. aren't you tired? wouldn't you like a vacation like to europe?

it was a fabulous trip in 1871 and nast was a very humorous person and he said well do they have $200,000? the lawyer said yeah. what about $300,000? ian. what about $400,000 at which point the lawyer knew he was being played. a few days later nassau at -- outside the house of his response was to get especially pugnacious. this is a mistake because now he is mad. and also to go to morristown new jersey and i've icehouse with his wife because he worried about his wife and children so he moves his children to new jersey partly to get away from the rough-and-tumble of that crusade in the city. and partly i think because he is becoming a class and he also becomes much more committed to this thing because it's clear to him that it has attracted attention. on the one hand he doesn't like

being told what to do which is a lifelong quality and on the other hand nast is an incredibly ambitious person so when he sees it others you he will keep doing it. he once was in washington d.c. and carl shirts the senator pull them aside and complained. you make me look ridiculous. i'm going to tell fletcher harper is going to make you stop and nast laughed in his face and wrote it leaf robe -- gleeful letter home. one tries to translate so was a terrible mistake to attract his attention in that way and one of the things that happened during the campaign was that would have been an elite attack on a particular kind of political struggle was transformed by nast into this world in ways which made the didn't reflect it. >> do you mentioned that he died young.

see what happened was he needed money because he had a couple of terrible investments so a investment and grant an award which was an investment house run by u.s. grandson which failed because war turned out to be a terrible croak and stole everyone's money. this was the tragedy which precipitated grants decline in his throat cancer and then his death. nasa lost all this money too. he had money that he invested in the silvermine which also turned out to be a scam so he found himself with no money. so he tried to get a bit the problem is everyone wants a diplomatic appointment. he got a letter from the roosevelt administration that said people die in the saddle because who would lead diplomatic service? so he couldn't get any of the good ones. he thought they will send me to miami but they didn't. they sent him to ecuador into a place that is notoriously deadly

because of yellow fever and his wife was very unhappy that it paid $4000 a a year. that was enough to keep them afloat so that is why he took the job. i think there's a lot to be said for the argument he would have gotten a better deal had he been a less controversial person. the problem is if you spend your whole life making enemies even your friends won't offer you assistance. by 1902 his career is in decline so it as if they offended him and they could really hurt him. somebody like that thing's pylon at the end and that was one of the reasons he ended up in such and i might be placed. [inaudible] cms. he made friends with a german consul and wrote letters and lots of letters with drawings but he wrote these letters home to his wife and he settled and

was living in a boarding house and doing okay and then he got sick. he literally laid down in the hammock and within one week he was dead. >> we have a final question. no? >> thank you very much. thank you. [applause] >> up next for mesa arizona we sit down with valerie adams. in her book "eisenhower's fine group of fellows" she examines eisenhower's use of civilians in helping craft foreign and

domestic policy. see what role do civilians play and domestic and international policy? >> well, for advising purposes for presidents and important law and i think eisenhower, president eisenhower did an excellent job in utilizing the resources of civilian advisers. the 1950s was a time of tremendous technical change and with the tensions of the cold war eisenhower had to rely on those experts in science, technology, in government and politics to come together and get him sound recommendations to how to develop a strong national defense because quite frankly the united states was a new territory at this point in the cold war. how do you guard against a possible surprise attack from the soviet union?

what resources do we have where we don't have to tax the american people so heavily? what eisenhower did was he to use some of the best monies in president of m.i.t. and caltech and former state department employees and so on and so forth in order to give him recommendations as to how to proceed and in doing that it's an ad hoc community. they don't have a political state. they are not republicans and democrats informing the presidency but they have the best interest of the nation. he also moleh had made his own decision by having the civilian ad hoc communities. he was able to get buy-ins from a lot of people didn't have some some humility that he didn't know everything in the age where technology was changing so rapidly. a lot of these people work together on various other organizations and committees and groups. a lot of them came from world war ii where the united states utilized some of the bigger

engineering schools for the manhattan project and the laboratory so it's a network of people who had experience serving the government even though it wasn't an elected official capacity. his advisor was well-connected and was able to craft rules within the committees. perhaps the most important would be one that happened in the mid- part of his tenure as president called that killian committed the technological capability panel. two things that came out of that committee was an emphasis on intercontinental ballistic missile technology or icbm programs. what eisenhower were called the bigger bang for your buck and probably what the audience is most familiar with that has name recognition is the you too

reconnaissance plane and that is where the united states is able to do these overflights and some members of the audience may remember the cuban missile crisis that first brought back the photograph. the soviet union was placing missiles in cuba so that program came from one of the civilian ad hoc committees that eisenhower had convened. >> got it these committees get along with the actual administration? >> it depended on the committee. the first to committeecommittee s that i looked at in my book got along very well and eisenhower had a lot of oversight in picking the committee members and having known the committee members. the third committee kind of came to him from some political pressure. the third committee was looking at whether or not the united states federal government should allocate resources for fallout shelters, a massive national fallout shelter.

eisenhower didn't believe that the united states should, but that money should be used for active defense and not passive defense. he was concerned with the message it would send to both the allies and the soviet union if we embarked on this massive fallout shelter program and so that committee disagreed with eisenhower and many of the members breached information to the press which indicated the united states was in the gravest danger. eisenhower had not prepared and that did not go over well. we can look at that community is the endpoint of him using the civilian ad hoc committee. my interest in this topic when i was a graduate student in fact stem from my interest in science and tech knowledge he. as used by presidents and then as i was revising my dissertation for the manuscript