Thomas Nast: The Father of Modern Political Cartoons

Notes

293 N O T E S Abbreviations AC Accession number CCF Caricature and Cartoon File, Print Room, New-York Historical Society, New York, N.Y. CEN Charles Eliot Norton FLIN Frank Leslie’s Illustrated News GA File code GWC George William Curtis GWCP George William Curtis Papers, bMS AM 1124, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. HM Huntington Library, Manuscript Division, San Marino, Calif. HW Harper’s Weekly JTNS Journal of the Thomas Nast Society LOC Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. MCNY Museum of the City of New York MFPL Morristown Free Public Library, Morristown, N.J. NPC Norton Parker Chipman NPCCW Norton Parker Chipman Collected Works, 1803–1924, vol. 2, California History Section, California State Library, Sacramento NYHS New-York Historical Society, New York, N.Y. NYIN New York Illustrated News NYT New York Times RBHPL Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Center, Freemont, Ohio SEN Sarah Edwards Nast TN Thomas Nast TNC Thomas Nast Collection TND Thomas Nast Diary, 1860–1861, Thomas Nast Papers, Box 1, GA-33, Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Center, Freemont, Ohio TNP Thomas Nast Papers 294Notes to Pages 1–4 Chapter One 1. Paine, Thomas Nast. 2. For example, “Caricaturists,” Louisville Courier-Journal, Sunday, December 11, 1887; “Caricature in the United States,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 25–42; and “American Caricaturists,” unknown publication, in TNC, MFPL. In 1976, cartoonist Draper Hill, whose biography of James Gillray is the definitive work on that cartoonist, began to write a biography of Thomas Nast. It has never been finished, but in an unpublished chapter, Hill repeats some of Paine’s details, along with confirming material from James Parton. See Draper Hill, “Tommy on Top,” 88–90, unpublished essay, TNP, RBHPL, GA-33, Box 1. 3. Alice Caulkins, “Thomas Nast: A Chronology,” JTNS 10, no. 1 (1996): 119–23. 4. Paine, Thomas Nast, 6. 5. The last reference to Nast’s birth family in the Paine biography appears on page 68. Nast’s sister is mentioned only in the very beginning of the book, on page 5. 6. Paine, Thomas Nast, 13. 7. Ibid., 8. Paine notes that the wife of the ship’s captain treated Nast with “wine and quinine,” suggesting malaria.There is no evidence that Nast suffered the recurring fevers of some malaria patients, however, so it is possible that he simply had a fever and the woman gave him the medicine she had on hand. 8. Caulkins, “Thomas Nast,” 119. 9. Paine, Thomas Nast, 13. 10. Company Six was the company of William M. Tweed, who was later called “Boss” Tweed. Briefly, in 1850,Tweed led the company. Its truck was decorated with the head of a tiger, a symbol Tweed suggested and that he later adapted as the symbol of Tammany Hall. See Paine,Thomas Nast, 12–14; and Bales,Tiger in the Streets, 28, 33, 45. 11. See Tolzmann, German-American Experience, 191–93, 397–98; and Furer,Germans in America, 39–43. 12. A number of German-speaking artists lived in New York in this period, offering Nast with thriving community to join. See Ernst, Immigrant Life, 214–15; Table 27 shows immigrant artists. 13. “Thomas Nast,” HW, May 11, 1867, 293. 14. Cummings, Historic Annals; Clarke, History of the National Academy of Design . 15. Paine, Thomas Nast, 16–17. 16. The use of printed images in private homes is well-known, but illustrated newspapers were printed on fairly inexpensive paper, in comparison to the high quality of Currier & Ives prints. It is initially difficult to imagine the paper surviving the process of cutting and pasting, and the rigors of nineteenth-century life. Readers nonetheless cut out drawings they liked and pasted them up. Frank Leslie even made special accommodations for this by warning readers to examine the paper thoroughly before cutting in order to catch any important text (which might be on the back of a picture and thus lost if it was cut out too soon), and by usually Notes to Pages 4–7295 printing “stories and miscellaneous materials” on the back of an illustration. See Gambee, Frank Leslie, 50. 17. Mott, History of American Magazines, 2:44; Gambee, Frank Leslie, 4–39. 18. Mott, History of American Magazines, 2:453. Gambee, Frank Leslie, 4, suggests that Leslie did not intend his paper to be “sensational” in a prurient sense, like the Penny Press, but that his personality lent itself to coverage...