The Origin Of The Republican Elephant

Thomas Nast, great American illustrator and caricaturist of the last century, originated the elephant as the symbol of the Republican Party.

In the spring of 1874, the year after Grant began his second term as President, the old New York Herald came out with an editorial raising the false cry of “Caesarism” against Grant. The President was represented as a Caesar plotting to overthrow the unwritten law against a third term and make himself a dictator. Despite the untruth of the charge, the Democrat party promptly picked up the cry.

The editorial was designed not so much a serious attack on Grant but mainly as a sensation to increase circulation in an off-year. Nevertheless, it succeeded in distorting the political situation and frightening even some Republicans away from the Party fold.

At approximately the same time, the Herald concocted another story to increase circulation; this was the famous Central Park menagerie scare of 1874 -- another successful hoax. One summer morning there appeared in the Herald a plausible tale that animals in the zoo had escaped and were roaming about searching for prey. Great excitement resulted and calm came only when the story was labeled false.

Thomas Nast immediately saw the opportunity for a public lesson in the coincidence of the two false cries -- both raised by the Herald.

Nast’s cartoon first appeared in the November 7, 1874, issue of Harper’s Weekly, a paper which ranked among the most politically influential. The object of Nast’s caricature was to impress on the public mind the folly and danger of the Democrat cry of “Caesarism” and of the Herald’s hoaxes. For the caption of his cartoon, he used the familiar quotation:

“An ass, having put on the lion’s skin, roamed about in the forest and amused himself by frightening all the foolish animals he met within his wanderings.”

The ass represented the New York Herald, in the lion’s skin of Caesarism, frightening away the different animals who were various newspapers, states, and issues. One animal was the New York Tribune, another the Democrat Party. A third, the elephant, was labeled the Republican vote --not the Party, but the vote. The symbol of the elephant was used because it is clever and unwieldy, and although easily controlled until aroused, it is unmanageable when frightened. Here were all of the characteristics of the Republican vote in the coming election -- the cry of “Caesarism” about to panic the Republican vote away from the Party candidates.

In his next cartoon picturing the elephant which appeared after the elections in Harper’s Weekly of November 21, 1874, Nast sketched the Republican defeat by showing the elephant as having walked into the Democrat trap. The Republican vote had been decoyed from its natural allegiance.

The peculiar fitness of the illustration was at once apparent -- the elephant had come to stay as the emblem of Republicanism. In the ensuing issues of Harper’s and other papers, Nast used it over and over again. Eventually, what started as a symbol of the Republican vote came to stand for the Republican Party.

The modern elephant designed in 1969 by Jack Frost, Design Consultant to the National Committee, was a symbol of the new age of graphics. It signified that the Republican Party would not only accept change but would also initiate it. The Party went into the ‘70s with a classic and contemporary image--strong in its simplicity and straightness of direction and lines.

--Republican Party of Waukesha, 1/6/04--

Back to Republican Information Page