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 Mount 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 Mount 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 3-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.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
