1865 THOMAS NAST SANTA CLAUS CHRISTMAS CIVIL WAR HARPER’S WEEKLY ENGRAVING

Description: Large 24" x 16" centerfold from a December 1865 issue of Harper’s Weekly magazine featuring a Santa Claus Christmas print by artist Thomas Nast celebrating the end of the Civil War. This is an original nineteenth century Harper's Weekly hand colored Victorian era Christmas print by artist Thomas Nast, the creator of our modern graphic conception of Santa Claus. Our original prints are hand colored in-house by a professional colorist using premium pencils and water color paints in the English tradition. The subject matter is carefully researched to ensure authentic period coloring. It is a very detailed process that often requires the use of a magnifying glass. The prices of our hand colored prints are determined based on a variety of factors including the condition and scarcity of the original print and the complexity and amount of time it takes to finish the particular coloring project. We offer hand coloring services for prints provided by customers at the rate of $50 per hour. We have been collecting Harper's Weekly graphic art for over 40 years and only offer original full issues and authentic individual engravings. Please message us with any questions about this item or any other Harper's Weekly engravings.From The New York Times column "On This Day" by Robert C. Kennedy:Although other artists of the period sketched Santa Claus, Nast stands apart from the rest for his role in creating and popularizing the modern image of the Christmas figure. He contributed 33 Christmas drawings to Harper’s Weekly from 1863 through 1886, and Santa is seen or referenced in all but one. Nast’s full-page illustration of Santa Claus in 1881 quickly attained status akin to an official portrait, and is still widely reproduced today. Before Nast, different regions, ethnic groups, and artists in the United States presented Santa Claus in various ways. A sketch in Harper’s Weekly from 1858 shows a beardless Santa whose sleigh is pulled by a turkey. Nast was instrumental in standardizing and nationalizing the image of a jolly, kind, and portly Santa in a red, fur-trimmed suit delivering toys from his North Pole workshop. This was accomplished through his work in the pages of Harper’s Weekly, his contributions to other publications, and by Christmas-card merchants in the 1870s and 1880s who relied heavily upon his portraiture.While setting the national standard, Nast’s own depiction of Santa Claus changed over the years. He began his almost-annual contribution of Christmas illustrations when he joined the staff of Harper’s Weekly in 1862 during the Civil War. His first Santa (in the postdated January 3, 1863 issue) is a small elf distributing Christmas presents to Union soldiers in camp. Santa dangles by the neck a comical jumping jack identified in accompanying text as Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president. There was no doubt in Nast’s illustration whose side Santa favors in the war. Besides the military context, the cartoon is set off from later ones in that the gift giving is for adults, not children (except for the drummer boys). The other two Christmas illustrations of Nast’s published during the Civil War emphasize family scenes, with Santa relegated to the background.From 1866-1871, Nast continued to elaborate upon the image of Santa Claus portrayed in “Santa and His Works.” As in the featured cartoon, he also emphasized during this period Santa’s disciplinary role in judging whether the behavior of children during the past year warranted Christmas rewards or punishment. In an 1870 cartoon, Santa surprises two naughty children by jumping out as a jack-in-the-box clutching a switch for spanking. In 1871, Santa sits at his desk reading letter from parents chronicling their children’s good and bad acts, with the “letters from naughty children’s parents” far outnumbering the “letters from good children’s parents.” It is probably not coincidental that Nast was at that time the father of several young children (the eldest, Julia, was 9 years old in 1871). Whatever the reason, the cartoons helped revive the idea of Santa as reinforcing parental discipline, a notion that had waned since the publication of Moore’s poem in which Santa brought a “happy Christmas to all.”Through the rest of the 1870s, Nast’s Santa Claus was no longer the disciplinarian, but, instead, played a cat-and-mouse game with children in which he tried not to be seen and they tried to catch him in the act of delivering presents. Again, the illustrations likely reflected the situation in Nast’s home, where he loved to wrap presents and celebrate the season, but at a time when his children had become old enough to try to find the gifts and nab the gift-giver. In “Santa Waiting for Children to Get to Sleep” (1874), Santa is forced to delay on a rooftop because children in the house below are still awake. A related poem blames the late-night hours of the family on the use of gas lighting in homes. LIKE THIS ITEM? BUT DON'T LIKE THE PRICE? HOW MUCH DO YOU WANT TO PAY? MAKE US AN OFFER! Thomas NastFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to navigationJump to searchThomas NastPhotograph of Nast by Napoleon Sarony, taken in Union Square, New York CityBornSeptember 27, 1840 Landau, Rhine Palatinate, Kingdom of Bavaria, German Confederation (present-day Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany)DiedDecember 7, 1902 (aged 62) Guayaquil, EcuadorSignatureThomas Nast (/næst/; German: [nast]; September 27, 1840 – December 7, 1902) was a German-born American caricaturist and editorial cartoonist often considered to be the "Father of the American Cartoon".[1] He was a critic of Democratic Representative "Boss" Tweed and the Tammany Hall Democratic party political machine. Among his notable works were the creation of the modern version of Santa Claus (based on the traditional German figures of Sankt Nikolaus and Weihnachtsmann) and the political symbol of the elephant for the Republican Party (GOP). Contrary to popular belief, Nast did not create Uncle Sam (the male personification of the United States Federal Government), Columbia (the female personification of American values), or the Democratic donkey,[2] though he did popularize these symbols through his artwork. Nast was associated with the magazine Harper's Weekly from 1859 to 1860 and from 1862 until 1886.Early life and education[edit]Nast was born in military barracks in Landau, Germany (now in Rhineland-Palatinate), as his father was a trombonist in the Bavarian 9th regiment band.[3] Nast was the last child of Appolonia (née Abriss) and Joseph Thomas Nast. He had an older sister Andie; two other siblings had died before he was born. His father held political convictions that put him at odds with the Bavarian government, so in 1846, Joseph Nast left Landau, enlisting first on a French man-of-war and subsequently on an American ship.[4] He sent his wife and children to New York City, and at the end of his enlistment in 1850, he joined them there.[5]Nast attended school in New York City from the age of six to 14. He did poorly at his lessons, but his passion for drawing was apparent from an early age. In 1854, at the age of 14, he was enrolled for about a year of study with Alfred Fredericks and Theodore Kaufmann, and then at the school of the National Academy of Design.[6][7] In 1856, he started working as a draftsman for Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper.[8] His drawings appeared for the first time in Harper's Weekly on March 19, 1859,[9] when he illustrated a report exposing police corruption; Nast was 18 years old at that point.[10]Career[edit]Self-caricature of Thomas NastIn February 1860, he went to England for the New York Illustrated News to depict one of the major sporting events of the era, the prize fight between the American John C. Heenan and the English Thomas Sayers[11] sponsored by George Wilkes, publisher of Wilkes' Spirit of the Times. A few months later, as artist for The Illustrated London News, he joined Garibaldi in Italy. Nast's cartoons and articles about the Garibaldi military campaign to unify Italy captured the popular imagination in the U.S. In February 1861, he arrived back in New York. In September of that year, he married Sarah Edwards, whom he had met two years earlier.He left the New York Illustrated News to work again, briefly, for Frank Leslie's Illustrated News.[12] In 1862, he became a staff illustrator for Harper's Weekly. In his first years with Harper's, Nast became known especially for compositions that appealed to the sentiment of the viewer. An example is "Christmas Eve" (1862), in which a wreath frames a scene of a soldier's praying wife and sleeping children at home; a second wreath frames the soldier seated by a campfire, gazing longingly at small pictures of his loved ones.[13] One of his most celebrated cartoons was "Compromise with the South" (1864), directed against those in the North who opposed the prosecution of the American Civil War.[14] He was known for drawing battlefields in border and southern states. These attracted great attention, and Nast was referred to by President Abraham Lincoln as "our best recruiting sergeant".[15]After the war, Nast strongly opposed the Reconstruction policy of President Andrew Johnson, whom he depicted in a series of trenchant cartoons that marked "Nast's great beginning in the field of caricature".[16]Style and themes[edit]The American River Ganges, a cartoon by Thomas Nast showing bishops attacking public schools, with connivance of "Boss" Tweed. Harper's Weekly, September 30, 1871.September 1868 Nast Cartoon "This is a White Man's Government!" showing left to right a stereotyped Irishman, an ex-Confederate soldier (Nathan B. Forrest), and a financier (August Belmont) "triumphing" over a prostrate USCT soldier on the ground.The Usual Irish Way of Doing Things, a cartoon by Thomas Nast depicting a drunken Irishman lighting a powder keg. Published in Harper's Weekly, September 2, 1871.1871 Cartoon: "Move on! Has the Native American no rights that the naturalized American is bound to respect?" An ironic Nast Cartoon underlines that, while naturalized foreigners had the vote, Native Americans had no vote, as they were not considered United States citizens, which was not remedied until 1924.Nast's cartoons frequently had numerous sidebars and panels with intricate subplots to the main cartoon. A Sunday feature could provide hours of entertainment and highlight social causes. After 1870, Nast favored simpler compositions featuring a strong central image.[6] He based his likenesses on photographs.[6]In the early part of his career, Nast used a brush and ink wash technique to draw tonal renderings onto the wood blocks that would be carved into printing blocks by staff engravers. The bold cross-hatching that characterized Nast's mature style resulted from a change in his method that began with a cartoon of June 26, 1869, which Nast drew onto the wood block using a pencil, so that the engraver was guided by Nast's linework. This change of style was influenced by the work of the English illustrator John Tenniel.[17]A recurring theme in Nast's cartoons is racism and anti-Catholicism. Nast was baptized a Catholic at the Saint Maria Catholic Church in Landau,[18] and for a time received Catholic education in New York City.[19] When Nast converted to Protestantism remains unclear, but his conversion was likely formalized upon his marriage in 1861. (The family were practicing Episcopalians at St. Peter's in Morristown.) Nast considered the Catholic Church to be a threat to American values. According to his biographer, Fiona Deans Halloran, Nast was "intensely opposed to the encroachment of Catholic ideas into public education".[20]When Tammany Hall proposed a new tax to support parochial Catholic schools, he was outraged. His savage 1871 cartoon "The American River Ganges", depicts Catholic bishops, guided by Rome, as crocodiles moving in to attack American school children as Irish politicians prevent their escape. He portrayed public support for religious education as a threat to democratic government. The authoritarian papacy in Rome, ignorant Irish Americans, and corrupt politicians at Tammany Hall figured prominently in his work. Nast favored nonsectarian public education that mitigated differences of religion and ethnicity. However, in 1871 Nast and Harper's Weekly supported the Republican-dominated board of education in Long Island in requiring students to hear passages from the King James Bible, and his educational cartoons sought to raise anti-Catholic and anti-Irish fervor among Republicans and independents.[21]Nast expressed anti-Irish sentiment by depicting them as violent drunks. He used Irish people as a symbol of mob violence, machine politics, and the exploitation of immigrants by political bosses.[22] Nast's emphasis on Irish violence may have originated in scenes he witnessed in his youth. Nast was physically small and had experienced bullying as a child.[23] In the neighborhood in which he grew up, acts of violence by the Irish against black Americans were commonplace.[24]In 1863, he witnessed the New York City draft riots in which a mob composed mainly of Irish immigrants burned the Colored Orphan Asylum to the ground. His experiences may explain his sympathy for black Americans and his "antipathy to what he perceived as the brutish, uncontrollable Irish thug".[23] An 1876 Nast cartoon combined a caricature of Charles Francis Adams Sr with anti-Irish sentiment and anti-Fenianship.[25]October 26, 1874, Nast cartoon "The Union as it was...This is a White Mans Government....the Lost cause...Worse than Slavery"Thomas Nast's cartoon "Third Term Panic" {Inspired by the tale of a The Ass in the Lion's Skin} and a rumor of President Grant seeking a third term, the Democratic donkey aka "Caesarism" panics the other political animals-including a Republican Party elephant at the left1879 Nast cartoon: "Red gentleman (Indian) to yellow gentleman (Chinese) "Pale face 'fraid you crowd him out, as he did me." In the left background an African American remarks "My day is coming".In general, his political cartoons supported American Indians and Chinese Americans. He advocated the abolition of slavery, opposed racial segregation, and deplored the violence of the Ku Klux Klan. In one of his more famous cartoons, the phrase "Worse than Slavery" is printed on a coat of arms depicting a despondent black family holding their dead child; in the background is a lynching and a schoolhouse destroyed by arson. Two members of the Ku Klux Klan and White League, paramilitary insurgent groups in the Reconstruction-era South, shake hands in their mutually destructive work against black Americans."Colored Rule in a Reconstructed(?) State", Harper's Weekly, March 14, 1874. By this point, Nast had given up on racial idealism and caricatured black legislators as incompetent buffoons.Despite Nast's championing of minorities, Morton Keller writes that later in his career "racist stereotypy of blacks began to appear: comparable to those of the Irish—though in contrast with the presumably more highly civilized Chinese."[26]Nast introduced into American cartoons the practice of modernizing scenes from Shakespeare for a political purpose.Nast also brought his approach to bear on the usually prosaic almanac business, publishing an annual Nast's Illustrated Almanac from 1871 to 1875. The Green Bag republished all five of Nast's almanacs in the 2011 edition of its Almanac & Reader.[27]Campaign against the Tweed Ring[edit]The "Brains" Boss Tweed depicted by Thomas Nast in a wood engraving published in Harper's Weekly, October 21, 1871A Group of Vultures Waiting for the Storm to "Blow Over" – "Let Us Prey." The Tweed Ring depicted by Nast in a wood engraving published in Harper's Weekly, September 23, 1871The Tammany Tiger Loose—"What are you going to do about it?", published in Harper's Weekly in November 1871, just before election day. "Boss" Tweed is depicted in the audience as the Emperor.The 1876 cartoon that helped identify Boss Tweed in Spain.Nast's drawings were instrumental in the downfall of Boss Tweed, the powerful Tammany Hall leader. As commissioner of public works for New York City, Tweed led a ring that by 1870 had gained total control of the city's government, and controlled "a working majority in the State Legislature".[28] Tweed and his associates—Peter Barr Sweeny (park commissioner), Richard B. Connolly (controller of public expenditures), and Mayor A. Oakey Hall—defrauded the city of many millions of dollars by grossly inflating expenses paid to contractors connected to the Ring. Nast, whose cartoons attacking Tammany corruption had appeared occasionally since 1867, intensified his focus on the four principal players in 1870 and especially in 1871.Tweed so feared Nast's campaign that he sent an emissary to offer the artist a bribe of $100,000, which was represented as a gift from a group of wealthy benefactors to enable Nast to study art in Europe.[29] Feigning interest, Nast negotiated for more before finally refusing an offer of $500,000 with the words, "Well, I don't think I'll do it. I made up my mind not long ago to put some of those fellows behind the bars".[30] Nast pressed his attack in the pages of Harper's, and the Ring was removed from power in the election of November 7, 1871. Tweed was arrested in 1873 and convicted of fraud. When Tweed attempted to escape justice in December 1875 by fleeing to Cuba and from there to Spain, officials in Vigo were able to identify the fugitive by using one of Nast's cartoons.[31]Party politics[edit]Compromise With the South (1864) by Thomas Nast, urging the U.S. not to capitulate to the Confederacy in the American Civil WarAn 1869 Nast cartoon supporting the Fifteenth Amendment[32][33]Interior Secretary Schurz cleaning house, Harper's Weekly, January 26, 1878Senatorial Round House, from Harper's Weekly, July 10, 1886Harper's Weekly, and Nast, played an important role in the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1864, and Ulysses S. Grantin 1868 and 1872. In September 1864, when Lincoln was running for re-election against Democratic candidate George B. McClellan, who positioned himself as the "peace candidate", Harper's Weekly published Nast's cartoon "Compromise with the South – Dedicated to the Chicago Convention", which criticized McClellan's peace platform as pro-South. Millions of copies were made and distributed nationwide, and Nast was later credited with aiding Lincoln's campaign in a critical moment.[34] Nast played important role during the presidential election in 1868, and Ulysses S. Grant attributed his victory to "the sword of Sheridan and the pencil of Thomas Nast."[35] In the 1872 presidential campaign, Nast's ridicule of Horace Greeley's candidacy was especially merciless.[36] After Grant's victory in 1872, Mark Twain wrote the artist a letter saying: "Nast, you more than any other man have won a prodigious victory for Grant—I mean, rather, for Civilization and Progress."[37] Nast became a close friend of President Grant and the two families shared regular dinners until Grant's death in 1885.Nast and his wife moved to Morristown, New Jersey in 1872 and there they raised a family that eventually numbered five children. In 1873, Nast toured the United States as a lecturer and a sketch-artist.[38] His activity on the lecture circuit made him wealthy.[39] Nast was for many years a staunch Republican.[40] Nast opposed inflation of the currency, notably with his famous rag-baby cartoons, and he played an important part in securing Rutherford B. Hayes' presidential election in 1876. Hayes later remarked that Nast was "the most powerful, single-handed aid [he] had",[41] but Nast quickly became disillusioned with President Hayes, whose policy of Southern pacification he opposed.The death of the Weekly's publisher, Fletcher Harper, in 1877 resulted in a changed relationship between Nast and his editor George William Curtis. His cartoons appeared less frequently, and he was not given free rein to criticize Hayes or his policies.[42] Beginning in the late 1860s, Nast and Curtis had frequently differed on political matters and particularly on the role of cartoons in political discourse.[43] Curtis believed that the powerful weapon of caricature should be reserved for "the Ku-Klux Democracy" of the opposition party, and did not approve of Nast's cartoons assailing Republicans such as Carl Schurz and Charles Sumner who opposed policies of the Grant administration.[44] Nast said of Curtis: "When he attacks a man with his pen it seems as if he were apologizing for the act. I try to hit the enemy between the eyes and knock him down."[26] Fletcher Harper consistently supported Nast in his disputes with Curtis.[43] After his death, his nephews, Joseph W. Harper Jr. and John Henry Harper, assumed control of the magazine and were more sympathetic to Curtis's arguments for rejecting cartoons that contradicted his editorial positions.[45]Between 1877 and 1884, Nast's work appeared only sporadically in Harper's, which began publishing the milder political cartoons of William Allen Rogers. Although his sphere of influence was diminishing, from this period date dozens of his pro-Chinese immigration drawings, often implicating the Irish as instigators. Nast blamed U.S. Senator James G. Blaine (R-Maine) for his support of the Chinese Exclusion Act and depicted Blaine with the same zeal used against Tweed. Nast was one of the few editorial artists who took up for the cause of the Chinese in America.[46]Portrait of Thomas Nast from Harper's Weekly, 1867During the presidential election of 1880, Nast felt that he could not support the Republican candidate, James A. Garfield, because of Garfield's involvement in the Crédit Mobilier scandal; and did not wish to attack the Democratic candidate, Winfield Scott Hancock, his personal friend and a Union general whose integrity commanded respect. As a result, "Nast's commentary on the 1880 campaign lacked passion", according to Halloran.[47] He submitted no cartoons to Harper's between the end of March 1883 and March 1, 1884, partly because of illness.[48]In 1884, Curtis and Nast agreed that they could not support the Republican candidate James G. Blaine, a proponent of high tariffs and the spoils systemwhom they perceived as personally corrupt.[49] Instead, they became Mugwumps by supporting the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland, whose platform of civil service reform appealed to them. Nast's cartoons helped Cleveland become the first Democrat to be elected President since 1856. In the words of the artist's grandson, Thomas Nast St Hill, "it was generally conceded that Nast's support won Cleveland the small margin by which he was elected. In this his last national political campaign, Nast had, in fact, 'made a president'."[50]Nast's tenure at Harper's Weekly ended with his Christmas illustration of December 1886. It was said by the journalist Henry Watterson that "in quitting Harper's Weekly, Nast lost his forum: in losing him, Harper's Weekly lost its political importance."[51] Fiona Deans Halloran says "the former is true to a certain extent, the latter unlikely."[52]Nast lost most of his fortune in 1884 after investing in a banking and brokerage firm operated by the swindler Ferdinand Ward. In need of income, Nast returned to the lecture circuit in 1884 and 1887.[53] Although these tours were successful, they were less remunerative than the lecture series of 1873.[54] Harper's WeeklyFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to navigationJump to searchNot to be confused with Harper's Magazine, Harper's Bazaar, or Harpers Wine & Spirit.Harper's WeeklyHarper's Weekly cover featuring President-Elect Abraham Lincoln; illustration by Winslow Homer from a photograph by Mathew Brady (November 10, 1860)IllustratorsWinslow HomerLivingston HopkinsThomas NastGranville PerkinsTheodore R. DavisCategoriesNews, politicsFrequencyWeeklyFounderFletcher HarperYear founded1857First issueJanuary 3, 1857Final issueMay 13, 1916CompanyHarper & BrothersCountryUnited StatesBased inNew York City, New YorkLanguageEnglishHarper's Weekly, A Journal of Civilization was an American political magazine based in New York City. Published by Harper & Brothers from 1857 until 1916, it featured foreign and domestic news, fiction, essays on many subjects, and humor, alongside illustrations. It carried extensive coverage of the American Civil War, including many illustrations of events from the war. During its most influential period, it was the forum of the political cartoonist Thomas Nast.Contents1History1.1Inception1.2Civil War coverage1.3"President maker"1.4Early 1900s1.51970s2Publications3See also4Notes5References6External linksHistory[edit]Inception[edit]Harper & Brothers founders Fletcher, James, John and Joseph Wesley Harper (1860)Along with his brothers James, John, and Wesley, Fletcher Harper began the publishing company Harper & Brothers in 1825. Following the successful example of The Illustrated London News, Harper started publishing Harper's Magazine in 1850. The monthly publication featured established authors such as Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, and within several years, demand for the magazine was great enough to sustain a weekly edition.[1]In 1857, his company began publishing Harper's Weekly in New York City.[1] By 1860 the circulation of the Weekly had reached 200,000. Illustrations were an important part of the Weekly's content, and it developed a reputation for using some of the most renowned illustrators of the time, notably Winslow Homer, Granville Perkins, Porte Crayon, and Livingston Hopkins.Among the recurring features were the political cartoons of Thomas Nast, who was recruited in 1862 and worked with the Weekly for more than 20 years. Nast was a feared caricaturist, and is often called the father of American political cartooning.[2] He was the first to use an elephant as the symbol of the Republican Party.[3] He also drew the legendary character of Santa Claus; his version became strongly associated with the figure, who was popularized as part of Christmas customs in the late nineteenth century.Civil War coverage[edit]Harper's Weekly artist Alfred Waud sketching the Gettysburg battlefieldPortraits of escaped slave Gordon (July 4, 1863)Sherman's burning of McPhersonville, South Carolina, illustrated by William Waud (March 4, 1865)Harper's Weekly was the most widely read journal in the United States throughout the period of the Civil War.[4][5] So as not to upset its wide readership in the South, Harper's took a moderate editorial position on the issue of slavery prior to the outbreak of the war. Publications that supported abolition referred to it as "Harper's Weakly". The Weekly had supported the Stephen A. Douglas presidential campaign against Abraham Lincoln, but as the American Civil War broke out, it fully supported Lincoln and the Union. A July 1863 article on the escaped slave Gordon included a photograph of his back, severely scarred from whippings; this provided many readers in the North their first visual evidence of the brutality of slavery. The photograph inspired many free blacks in the North to enlist.[6]Some of the most important articles and illustrations of the time were Harper's reporting on the war. Besides renderings by Homer and Nast, the magazine also published illustrations by Theodore R. Davis, Henry Mosler, and the brothers Alfred and William Waud.In 1863, George William Curtis, one of the founders of the Republican Party, became the political editor of the magazine, and remained in that capacity until his death in 1892. His editorials advocated civil service reform, low tariffs, and adherence to the gold standard.[7]"President maker"[edit]Caricature of William "Boss" Tweed by Thomas Nast (October 21, 1871)"No rest for the wicked—sentenced to more hard labor": Self-caricature by Thomas Nast on the cover of Harper's Weekly (December 2, 1876)Harper's Weekly cover featuring Theodore Roosevelt (September 29, 1900)After the war, Harper's Weekly more openly supported the Republican Party in its editorial positions, and contributed to the election of Ulysses S. Grant in 1868 and 1872. It supported the Radical Republican position on Reconstruction. In the 1870s, the cartoonist Thomas Nast began an aggressive campaign in the journal against the corrupt New York political leader William "Boss" Tweed. Nast turned down a $500,000 bribe to end his attack.[8] Tweed was arrested in 1873 and convicted of fraud.Nast and Harper's also played an important part in securing Rutherford B. Hayes' 1876 presidential election. Later on Hayes remarked that Nast was "the most powerful, single-handed aid [he] had".[9] After the election, Nast's role in the magazine diminished considerably. Since the late 1860s, Nast and George W. Curtis had frequently differed on political matters and particularly on the role of cartoons in political discourse.[10] Curtis believed that mockery by caricature should be reserved for Democrats, and did not approve of Nast's cartoons assailing Republicans such as Carl Schurz and Charles Sumner, who opposed policies of the Grant administration. Harper's publisher Fletcher Harper strongly supported Nast in his disputes with Curtis. In 1877, Harper died, and his nephews, Joseph W. Harper Jr. and John Henry Harper, assumed control of the magazine. They were more sympathetic to Curtis' arguments for rejecting cartoons that contradicted his editorial positions.[11]In 1884, however, Curtis and Nast agreed that they could not support the Republican candidate James G. Blaine, whose association with corruption was anathema to them.[12] Instead they supported the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland. Nast's cartoons helped Cleveland become the first Democrat to be elected president since 1856. In the words of the artist's grandson, Thomas Nast St Hill, "it was generally conceded that Nast's support won Cleveland the small margin by which he was elected. In his last national political campaign, Nast had, in fact, 'made a president.'"[13]Nast's final contribution to Harper's Weekly was his Christmas illustration in December 1886. Journalist Henry Watterson said that "in quitting Harper's Weekly, Nast lost his forum: in losing him, Harper's Weekly lost its political importance."[14] Nast's biographer Fiona Deans Halloran says "the former is true to a certain extent, the latter unlikely. Readers may have missed Nast's cartoons, but Harper's Weekly remained influential."[15]

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