On This Day: The Democrats Become Donkeys

"A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion"

On January 15, 1870, the unofficial symbol of the Democratic Party was born in the form of a Thomas Nast political cartoon in Harper’s Weekly. The cartoon depicted a donkey kicking a dead lion; the donkey representing the “Copperhead Press,” and the lion representing Abraham Lincoln’s recently deceased Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton. If you remember from history class, the Copperheads were the faction of northern Democrats who disagreed with Civil War and were ready to sue for immediate peace at any cost. As you can tell, Nast disagreed with the viewpoint of the Copperheads, and also their treatment of Stanton’s death.

Just a coincidence…
Andrew Jackson, who was a Democrat, was called a jackass by his opponents because of his political views. In an effort to turn lemons into lemonade, Jackson used the symbol of the donkey in his political campaign and subsequently won the 1828 election. Nast, who was born in Germany and emigrated to the U.S. as a young boy, was unaware of this fact when he created the cartoon.

Trivia
Thomas Nast also created the Republican Party symbol, the elephant, in an 1874 Harper’s Weekly political cartoon.

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