Political Cartoons and Republicans

Introduction

The Republican Party was founded by a coalition in 1854 and was comprised of former members of the Whig, Free-Soil, and Know-Nothing parties. The slavery issue shattered America's established political landscape and catapulted the Republicans from what seemed like nowhere straight into the White House in 1860. After Fremont's attempt at winning the presidency in 1856, Lincoln won the election four years later, cementing the Republican Party's desire for executive power. In the aftermath of the Civil War, the United States found itself politically gridlocked. Neither the newly formed Republicans nor the Democrats were able to gain much traction. The decades after the Civil War saw some of the closest and most controversial races in American history. The Rutherford B. Hayes commissioned election victory is a great example as he had fewer popular votes than Sam Tilden, but won the election under the guise of the Electoral College. The 1888 election was also very close, as less than 100,000 votes separated the leading candidates; Benjamin Harrison again won by the rules of the electoral process but lost the popular vote. During the Gilded Age of American history, the mainstream political scene was superficial and intensely partisan, but the regular Joe loved it. "Despite the lack of issues," writes Morton Keller, "balloting - and straight ticket voting - in the 1870's and 1880's was at or near the highest level in American history." He also contends that policy had become subordinate to "the sumptuous display" of parades, bonfires, and pep rallies. Accompanying this era of political advertisement and propaganda, the political system itself depended upon a spoils and patronage allowance, which gave rise to political corruption.

Political cartoons and mass media grew up with the end of the Civil War as well. As Harper's weekly, Judge, Puck, and the New York World all competed for popular acceptance, they helped reform the political corruption of the time. After the critical election of 1896, the nature of party conflict changed. The close competition between the parties in the post Civil War period was replaced by Republican dominance. Mckinley's defeat of William Jennings Bryan in 1896 and 1900 was followed by Republican victories in every presidential election until 1932, except for Woodrow Wilson's victories in 1912 and 1916. This will be explored later. As the Republicans also controlled Congress from 1896 to 1930, except for during Wilson's tenure, they were dominant everywhere but the South. The purpose of this paper is to resolve the reasons for Republican dominance during this period. As mass media grew with the urbanization of a growing industrialized America, the Republican party maintained its dominance by using this media to push a message different from its post Civil War "hero" complex to one of prosperity guided by a pro-business platform. Political cartooning was instrumental in winning over America for the Republicans as corruption based reform cartoons were replaced by a dominant thread of defending the establishment. The Republican Party achieved its dominance through media, money, and message.

Media

As the Second Industrial Revolution gave rise to the growing populations in urban areas, the commercial landscape of America had changed since the Civil War. National newspapers grew in circulation, as well as magazines. As the Reconstruction era was plagued by political machines and their corruption, political critique was a common form of literature in these early forms of mass media. According to Fischer, "political cartoon art in a democratic society has been on of the purest artifacts of popular culture, seeking to influence public opinion through its use of widely and instantly understood symbols, slogans, referents, and allusions." (Fischer, 122) As they embody the humor of the general public, they do "influence public opinion" and their effect at a time when media was defined by the written word and illustrated by the political cartoon is analogous to the way in which television and its advertisements push citizens toward their commercial inclinations.

The effect of cartoons after the Civil War can be found in an anecdote whose components have elevated it to the stature of myth. Much of the legend surrounding Thomas Nast's 1871 Harper's Weekly cartoons on the corrupt "Boss" Tweed shows the importance and large impact of cartooning. Fischer writes, "The Story of William "Marcy" Tweed and his bete noir Tom Nast is known to most students of American history, and familiar to every aficionado of the history of American political cartooning... .This confrontation is credited by consensus with establishing once and forever a fledgling craft... as an enduring presence in American political culture. In its telling is exemplified those salient themes dear to the collective scholarship of the medium, such as it is - the power of the giants of the genre to fuse creative caricature, clever situational transpositions, and honest indignation to arouse the populace and alter for the better the course of human events." As Lewis L. Gould notes, Lincoln is frequently quoted as saying Nast was his best "recruiting" sergeant. (Gould, 30) By the end of the Gilded Age, political cartooning was an efficacious tool of advertising to the general public and swaying their opinion.

Magazines like Puck and Judge, the two fastest growing political cartoon publications after 1892, depended on all strata of the population, in that the political inspiration came from the intellectual aristocrats while the general public put ten cents down each week to keep them in print. Price is important to who reached which demographic. As Harper's sold for thirty-five cents, ten cents bought a copy of Judge or Puck, which contained color pictures (Harper's did not). With a price below Harper's Weekly, Judge and Puck were able to reach the large middle and working classes of urban America. The attention of a large and loyal group of buyers ensured these magazine's dominance in political satire through the end of the century. As Puck was founded by Keppler, a German immigrant who blasted Republican ideology, Judge took a different approach around the turn of the century.

Judge magazine was founded in 1881 as James Wales had a quarrel with Puck magazine's editor Joseph Keppler and left. As Puck magazine was the dominant source for political caricaturing in the urban northeast, Judge found it hard to compete early on. The reason for this is that Judge seemed to copy the format of Puck and was too much like its established rival