October Installment of Historical Society Exhibition: The Cartoonist and the Candidate:

October 10, 2008
by Gray Williams

The Cartoonist and the Candidate: Thomas Nast, Horace Greeley, and the Campaign of 1872

At the Horace Greeley House, the New Castle Historical Society continues its serial exhibition of the cartoons that Thomas Nast created to mock and discredit Horace Greeley, when Greeley ran against Ulysses S. Grant in the presidential campaign of 1872. Nast drew some 85 cartoons of Greeley that year, from January through November. They are being exhibited in installments, corresponding to the months in which they appeared in Harper’s Magazine.

Greeley had originally been the candidate of the Liberal Republicans, who were appalled by the scandals of the first Grant administration. But in July, the Democrats decided to form an alliance with the Liberals, and nominated Greeley as well. Grant supporters (such as Nast) were furious. They accused Greeley of pandering to the most unsavory elements of the Democratic party – the unrepentant rebels of the South and the corrupt Tammany machine of New York in the North.

A few states voted before the standard Election Day in November. In most of these early elections, Grant was the clear winner. Georgia was the only exception. The caption for this cartoon of October 19 sarcastically quotes Greeley’s call for reconciliation at the end of the Civil War, and adds a quotation from the Tribune praising the Georgia victory.

Nast shows what he thinks really happened in Georgia. To the left, an armed Ku-Klux-Klan mob drives black citizens away from the polls. To the right, a Klansman, with one foot on the American flag and the other on the body of a murdered black voter, shakes hands with a giddily prancing Greeley. Behind them, more Klansmen stuff the ballot box (actually a glass jar) with false votes.

Gray Williams is the official town historian for New Castle.