Q&A on the News

Q: When and why did the elephant become the symbol of the Republican Party and the donkey the symbol of the Democratic Party?

-- Jack Findlan, Decatur

A: Harper's Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast is credited with inventing the Republican elephant and for advancing the Democratic Party's association with the donkey with his political cartoons of the 1870s. During the midterm elections of 1874, a Nast cartoon depicted President Ulysses S. Grant's possible attempt at an unprecedented third term; this was at the same time that the New York Herald was running a series of editorials against the third term, according to C-SPAN. Nast had a donkey disguised as a lion trying to scare away animals in a forest. According to C-SPAN: "One of the animals frightened by the donkey's roar of Caesarism was an elephant -- a symbol for Republican voters, who were abandoning President Grant, and in Nast's view, about to fall into the Democrats' trap. Other cartoonists of the time picked up the idea of the timid elephant representing Republicans, and that symbol for the party became widely recognized and accepted by the general public." This was the first time these two animals had been used together, but the Democratic donkey had been around since Andrew Jackson's presidential campaign of 1828. According to C-SPAN, "Jackson was labeled a 'jackass' for his populist views. Jackson proudly seized the label and began using donkeys on his campaign posters. During his presidency, cartoonists sometimes used the donkey to illustrate President Jackson's stubbornness on certain issues."