Thomas Nast: Father of the American Cartoon

Okay, the title of this post is hyperbole. Whenever you think you’ve I.D.’d the first anything, you’re sure to be foiled. And of course everyone CLAIMS primacy. That’s just p.r. 101. But Thomas Nast (1840-1902) was both early and important in the cartooning game, we can acknowledge that much.

We’ve had occasion to mention Nast here before, most notably in connection to his role in contributing to modern conceptions of Santa Claus, Columbia, and Uncle Sam. I’m chagrined to realize that I have written at all about a part he played that relates him much more to vaudeville, though not in a good way. Nast’s cartoons depicting the Irish are among those most heinous stereotyped images that were ever produced, showing Irish people invariably as leering, dirty, lazy sub-humans. Now, it’s important to make a distinction. Overwhelmingly, I think, Irish stereotypes in vaudeville and silent movies, in songs, etc. are not ANTI-Irish stereotypes. A good many of the performers who played comical “stage paddies” were Irish themselves. For the most part they perpetrated good natured if disrespectful jabs about the supposed Irish fondnesses for drinking, swearing, and getting in brawls. Occasionally, a non-Irish performer would undertake such comic fodder, and these were more likely to be nastier delineations. No stereotype is harmless, but it gets complicated when actual Irishmen like John Ford or Charlie Murray are doing the stereotyping.

As for Nast, he was a German immigrant, and there was nothing good-natured about his cartoons. Some claimed, incorrectly, that the word “nasty” was derived from his name. Nasty cartoons made crude political points. He didn’t have, as we say, disrespectful affection for the Irish. He was anti-Irish, and to get the point of cross he made them look bad at cartoons. There are no excuses, but there is context. Raised Catholic himself, he converted to Protestantism, so he was also anti-Catholic, and of course the New York was full of Irish Catholics. More justifiably, he was very much against the Tammany Hall political machine, which of course heavily benefited the Irish. And he was anti-slavery, anti segregation, and anti-KKK, in a time when most Irish Democrats trended the other way (see 1863 draft riots). And he was sympathetic (for the most part) to Chinese Americans and Native Americans, though he didn’t always them that way. He was a cartoonist and caricaturist by trade and by inclination.

Well, what was he in favor of, then? Well, he was a Republican. He was a fan of Abraham Lincoln, and helped get him elected, and that same is true of Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, and Grover Cleveland (a compromise Democrat). He hated crooks and scandals and thus was in favor of government reforms that addressed corruption and inefficiency. Theodore Roosevelt was an admirer.

Born in Bavaria, Nast came to the U.S. with his family with that wave of immigrants surrounding the Revolutions of 1848. He was only 16 when he began drawing for such publications as Frank Leslie’s Illustrated New, New York Illustrated News, and Harper’s Weekly. Horace Greeley of the New-York Tribune, was one of his betes noires.

By the late 19th century, Nast’s style of cartooning had gone out of style and became difficult for him to secure work. He tried to start his own paper, but it only lasted a few months. Teddy Roosevelt named him Consul General to Ecuador. He accepted the post, and died of yellow fever six months after arriving in the country.

For more about stereotypes in vaudeville comedy,consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, for more on same in silent film please check out my book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube — now also available on audiobook.