Under The Thumb Cartoon Meaning

In Gilded Age New York City during the 1860s and 1870s, nobody wielded more political power than William Magear Tweed. Known by both his fans and fiercest critics every bit "Dominate Tweed," the former fireman rose through the ranks of New York's Autonomous party to pull the levers of the mighty political motorcar known as Tammany Hall.

Boss Tweed and his corrupt "Tweed Band" of city officials siphoned millions of dollars from swollen public works projects like a lavish new courthouse that toll near $fifteen million to build, including $ix one thousand thousand in kickbacks going to Tweed and his cronies.

Tweed held onto power through "patronage"—giving plum city jobs to loyal supporters (equally commissioner of public works, he hired 12 "manure inspectors")—and by providing generous assistance to Irish Cosmic immigrants, who repaid him with loyalty at the ballot box.

Boss Tweed operated with impunity—until he got under the pare of a 30-twelvemonth-sometime political cartoonist named Thomas Nast. Nast launched a relentless anti-corruption campaign against Tweed in the pages of Harper's Weekly. In his ferocious and funny caricatures, he painted Boss Tweed as a larger-than-life cheat and Tammany Hall as a den of tigers.

Thanks in large office to Nast'southward fell cartoons and dogged reporting from an upstart newspaper called the New-York Times, Boss Tweed was finally brought to justice.

Thomas Nast: 'Founding Father' of Political Cartooning

Thomas Nast was an immigrant himself. Built-in in Germany, nine-twelvemonth-erstwhile Nast and his family unit arrived in New York City in 1846. In those years, William Tweed was already a minor glory in New York Urban center as the burly leader of the Americus Burn down Company No. half dozen, ane of several volunteer firefighting companies in Manhattan that were little more than street gangs with fire hoses.

During the Civil War, immature Nast sided with the "Radical Republicans" and put his artistic talents to piece of work for the Union and abolitionist crusade. When the odds were stacked heavily against Abraham Lincoln in the 1864 election, Nast published a two-page engraving called "Compromise with the S" that may accept saved the beleaguered Republican president. In the 1868 election, Ulysses Southward. Grant credited his win to "the sword of Sheridan and the pencil of Nast."

Past 1869, Nast was a prolific and influential contributor to Harper's Weekly, the "most popular illustrated paper of the time," says Fiona Halloran, writer of Thomas Nast: The Begetter of Modern Political Cartoons. That'south when Nast turned his attention to Boss Tweed and his Autonomous Tammany Hall political machine.

"His whole life, Nast didn't like hypocrisy and he had a very binary, blackness-and-white view of what was correct and what was wrong," says Halloran. "If someone was corrupt, that meant they were also a 'actually bad person,' and Nast was gleeful nearly going after anyone who fell into that category. With Boss Tweed, Nast saw an opportunity to release a lot of venom in pursuit of something that would make him famous."

William 'Boss' Tweed — This Nast drawing depicts 'Dominate' Tweed with a money bag for a head, circa 1871.

Kean Collection/Getty Images

Boss Tweed Plagued by 'Those Damn Pictures'

In the 1870s, newspapers and weekly magazines like Harper'south Weekly were fixtures in the neighborhood taverns where working-class New Yorkers gathered to drink, buy groceries and even vote in local elections. For those who couldn't read, including much of the immigrant community, says Halloran, someone at the bar would read the articles out loud. Political cartoons, including Nast's brutal takedowns of Tweed, were pasted on the walls for everyone to see.

Nast produced more than 140 political cartoons targeting Boss Tweed, says Ryan Hyman, curator at the Macculloch Hall Historical Museum, which exhibits one of Nast's most famous cartoons, "Tammany Tiger Loose—What are you lot going to exercise virtually it?" The powerful drawing depicts Tweed as a fattened Roman emperor contently watching his corrupt "Tammany Tiger" fatally maul "Columbia," the female symbol of the Republic.

Nast drew inspiration for his cartoons from articles and editorials well-nigh Tweed's brazen corruption published in the New-York Times, a new Republican newspaper. The more that the Times revealed, the angrier and bolder Nast's drawings become. A cartoon titled "The Brains" featured a corpulent Tweed with a purse of coin for a head. Another depicted all of New York under the giant thumb of Tweed.

The destructive potential of Nast's cartoons wasn't lost on Tweed.

"Allow'southward terminate those damned pictures," Tweed reportedly said. "I don't care and then much what the papers write about me—my constituents can't read, but damn it, they can encounter pictures."

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Nast Receives Threats, Just Doesn't Waver

In 1873, Nast was living in Harlem with his married woman and pocket-sized child when he says that a stranger knocked at their door with a suspicious question: "You've been working and so hard on your cartoons, aren't you tired? Wouldn't like to keep a vacation?"

Nast recognized the man equally one of Tweed's lawyers and decided to play forth, says Halloran. "What kind of holiday?" Nast asked. "Possibly you lot'd like to have a trip to England or bout Europe," the lawyer proposed. "Well, I'd need a lot of money for that," said Nast. "How much money? Would $100,000 be plenty?" asked the lawyer.

According to Nast, he negotiated his payoff upwardly to $500,000 earlier Tweed's lawyer realized that Nast was messing with him and left with a threatening, "You'll be distressing."

Nast probably took this threat seriously, because he immediately moved his family from Harlem to Morristown, New Bailiwick of jersey, and bought a business firm across the street from celebrated Macculloch Hall. Hyman says that the museum's drove includes five,000 of Nast'southward engravings and sketches, and some personal items as well.

"We have a walking stick in the drove donated by Thomas Nast'south son, Cyril," says Hyman. "At that place's a letter of the alphabet written along with it: 'Dad carried this stick around during the Tweed entrada. It'southward loaded with lead.'"

From the safety of Morristown, Nast didn't let upwardly a flake on the relentless campaign against Tweed. He churned out five or half dozen cartoons a week for Harper's.

"Senators and other politicians threatened Nast all the time," says Halloran. "He had the kind of personality where the more you pressed him, the less probable he was to back down."

Boss Tweed's Downfall—And Nast's Legacy

boss tweed, tammany hall — 'Boss' Tweed was convicted of corruption in 1873 and died in prison 4 years later

At his peak, Dominate Tweed enjoyed wealth and influence beyond imagination. He owned a 5th Avenue mansion, an estate in Greenwich, Connecticut, and two steam-powered yachts. In improver to his position as the Commissioner of Public Works, Tweed was the director of a bank, a railroad visitor and a publishing firm.

Then the New-York Times finally defenseless up with him. The newspaper got its hands on a "smoking gun," a secret Tammany Hall ledger detailing how Tweed and his "Ring" stole hand-over-fist from the city. When investigators uncovered the full extent of Tweed'southward crimes, the total theft came to $45 million (nigh $1 billion today).

Ultimately, it was reporters and editors at the Times that took Tweed downwardly, just Halloran says that Nast's barrage of negative political cartoons had "an outsized effect on the entrada against Tweed. From the betoken of view of the ordinary Joe, information technology was Nast who toppled Tweed."

Tweed was convicted of corruption in 1873 and died in prison iv years later (afterward a failed escape try to Spain).

Nast, already well-known in Republican circles, became a national celebrity after the Tweed campaign. He went on a national tour doing "chalk talks," says Halloran, where audiences would pay top dollar to sentinel him draw.

Today, Nast is best known as the human who created the elephant and the ass as the mascots for the Republican and Democratic parties, and who drew some of the earliest and most iconic images of Santa Claus.