< PREVIOUS ] [ 2006 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
This election day, I could join in the feeding frenzy
that comes whenever a prominent right-thinker is caught
with his pants down. But as the Bible says, all have
sinned.
Besides, the novel Elmer Gantry
was
published nearly 80 years ago, and if some Americans
haven't figured this stuff out by now, they're never going
to.
Or I could disparage the negative political messages and act as though they're something new and shocking. But American political campaigns have been down and dirty for more than two centuries.
Consider the election of 1800, when President John Adams was seeking a second term, and Vice-President Thomas Jefferson was the challenger. Adams was a Federalist; Jefferson a Republican (his party was also known as the Democratic-Republican, and in 1828 just the Democratic Party; the modern Republican Party dates to 1854).
The Federalists went after Jefferson hammer-and-tongs:
Shall I continue in allegiance to God -- and a Religious
President, or impiously declare for Jefferson -- and No
God!!!
asked the leading Federalist newspaper, the
Gazette of the United States.
The Hartford, Conn., newspaper warned that if Jefferson
were elected, Murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest
will all be openly taught and practiced.
Another
Federalist called Jefferson a mean-spirited low-lived
fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw sired by a
mulatto father.
Despite all that, as well as the later rumors about his
dusky Sally, the African Venus,
Jefferson was
elected and re-elected anyway. It says something wonderful
about America that a man who was denounced from so many
pulpits now has his face on our currency and on Mt.
Rushmore, with a memorial in the national capital.
Now for a bit of historic political trivia. The Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey derive from the same cartoonist's pen, and there's a Colorado connection.
The cartoonist was Thomas Nast, a German immigrant whose
family fled a repressive government for America in 1846. In
those days before photographs could be printed in
newspapers and magazines, he became a prominent
illustrator, and during the Civil War, he started drawing
political cartoons for Harper's Weekly, the Journal of
Civilization.
Nast was a staunch opponent of corruption; his cartoons
brought down Boss Tweed
in New York City. It's hard
to imagine now that someone could oppose corruption and
still fervently support the administration of U.S. Grant,
but Nast was a devoted Republican.
The Democratic donkey appeared after Edwin M. Stanton,
secretary of war under Abraham Lincoln, died on Dec. 24,
1869. Democrats assailed him even after his death, and
three weeks later, a Nast cartoon showed A live jackass
kicking a dead lion.
The Republican elephant was part of a frightened
menagerie in a cartoon published on Nov. 7, 1874; the
animals were alarmed by an ass, having put on a lion's
skin,
and the pachyderm labeled the Republican
vote
was about to tumble into a pitfall.
Neither characterization was flattering, so it's surprising that the parties embraced these symbols, but there's no point in trying to mix logic and American politics.
As for the Colorado connection, in 1886 Nast invested in
a mine and sent his son out west to manage it. The mine did
not pay. According to the 1904 biography at hand, he came
out here himself in 1887 to examine the property, and was
welcomed in Denver with a gift, a curious locket made
for him of various metals of the state,
presented by
the little daughter of Sen. Tabor
and Baby Doe.
Nast then traveled for a distance in company with the
directors of the Midland Railroad, and a lofty snow-clad
peak on the line was christened Mt. Nast in honor of the
occasion. One of the highest summits of the range, it will
remain a noble monument for all time.
The Colorado Midland Railroad is long gone, but Mt. Nast, 12,454 feet, is still there, about a dozen miles northeast of Aspen in Pitkin County. Nearby along the railroad, there was also a Nast siding, which once boasted a post office, and there's a three-mile-long Nast Tunnel that is part of the Fryingpan-Arkansas water project.
Colorado may well be the only place in the world with a mountain, or anything else for that matter, named after a political cartoonist. Nast was a Republican, as was Frederick Pitkin, that county's namesake, and yet Pitkin County is a solidly Democratic venue. But then again, there's no point in trying to mix logic with American politics.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 2006 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >