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Kitchen Table Kibitzing 1/15/25: Great Moments in Branding [1]
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Date: 2025-01-15
Happy 155th Birthday to the unofficial symbol of the Democratic Party, the donkey. The original unflattering depiction was drawn by the legendary Thomas Nast.
On January 15, 1870, the first recorded use of a donkey to represent the Democratic Party appears in Harper’s Weekly. Drawn by political illustrator Thomas Nast, the cartoon is entitled “A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion.” The jackass (donkey) is tagged “Copperhead Papers,” referring to the Democrat-dominated newspapers of the South, and the dead lion represents the late Edwin McMasters Stanton, President Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war during the final three years of the Civil War. In the background is an eagle perched on a rock, representing the postwar federal domination in the South, and in the far background is the U.S. Capitol.
Humble beginnings
As they do now, Republicans used it to smear Democrats.
In the cartoon, Nast (1840-1902) was voicing his view that the Copperhead press had dishonored the legacy of Lincoln’s administration. Historians note that Andrew Jackson, the founder of the modern Democratic Party, had been labeled a jackass by his National Republican opponents during the 1828 presidential race. (Jackson won the race, which featured vicious mudslinging.) A political cartoon of Jackson riding a donkey appeared in 1837. His political opponents called Jackson a “jackass” for espousing populist views. Jackson apparently didn’t mind the intended insult; he used the image of the strong-willed donkey on his campaign posters. x x YouTube Video
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