A Quick History Lesson On Elephants And Donkeys And Politics
A Quick History Lesson On Elephants And Donkeys And Politics
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David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
A Quick History Lesson On Elephants And Donkeys And PoliticsWhen Kosciusko County Council at-large member Joni Truex sent us a photo this week of her, at-large member Sue Ann Mitchell and at-large candidate Kathy Groninger posing with the elephant at McKinley Park, that made us wonder how the elephant came to symbolize Republicans and the donkey came to symbolize Democrats.
According to the History Channel: The origins of the Democratic donkey can be traced to the 1828 presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson. During that race, opponents of Jackson called him a jackass. Jackson was amused by it and included an image of the animal in his campaign posters.
In the 1870s, influential political cartoonist Thomas Nast helped popularize the donkey as a symbol for the entire Democratic Party.
The Republican Party was formed in 1854 and six years later, Abraham Lincoln became its first member elected to the White House. An image of an elephant was featured as a Republican symbol in at least one political cartoon and a newspaper illustration during the Civil War, but the pachyderm didn’t start to take hold as a GOP symbol until Nast used it in an 1874 Harper’s Weekly cartoon.
