Thomas Nast Takes on Boss Tweed | BRIdge from the Past: Art Across U.S. History

0:00 [Music] hi everybody happy new year it’s 21 and everything’s gone back to normal well at least we’re back for more primary source image fun here on bridge from the past i’m mary patterson and in this series we help you decipher primary source visuals that tell the

0:21 stories of america’s past today we’re looking at an 1871 political cartoon by the artist thomas nast in the 1870s nast’s cartoons helped take down a political figure known as boss tweed looking at his cartoons will help us consider the following question what is the role of the press in

0:41 ensuring a democratic republic like the united states is functioning the way that it should to help me with this question i’ve brought back my colleague liz all the way from arizona hey liz hi thanks for having me i’m excited to talk about this of course are you ready to take down boss tweed i am and my favorite thing about this is

1:02 i don’t really know a whole lot about boss tweed this is kind of one of those holes in my history so i’m excited to learn all right well let’s jump in here is our image the tammany tiger loose by thomas nast and this cartoon appeared in the magazine harper’s weekly on november 11 1871. whenever we’re confronted with the historic image we have to just take a

1:23 minute and observe and try to turn those observations into questions and from there we can start trying to find answers so there’s a lot going on in this cartoon so what strikes you liz when you first see the tammany tiger loose how much damage this tiger has done i think i mean the tiger itself is very

1:44 prominent in this political cartoon it’s it’s a very scary looking tiger this is not like cute and cuddly but even just looking behind and all of the damage it’s already inflicted on whatever this is supposed to be representing that really to me stands out

2:05 yeah and to me it’s very reminiscent of like a coliseum or like a gladiator moment so you can see like these this tiger is because it’s it’s mauled it looks like a woman and as you said there’s these two other victims that it’s already taken out right here and there’s this huge crowd watching it all so who is this tiger who

2:27 is this crowd who is he or she i don’t know the the sex of the tiger um who are the victims right we have all these questions that it would behoove us for a little bit of context to try to think think about this so here are just some essential need to know information that will help us think

2:48 about this cartoon so boss tweed so we said in the beginning thomas nas is attacking someone on his boss tweed and he was a political boss and basically in charge of the democratic party in new york city and his seat of power or his headquarters where he and all his his crooked politician buddies worked was tammany hall

3:09 so the tammany tiger starts to make a little bit more sense and new york city in the 1870s was was not really a super nice place it was extremely crowded it was very dirty and boss tweed as a politician worked to address some of these things but he was also pretty much a gangster he was very corrupt in a lot of ways

3:30 and you can see in this another political cartoon by thomas nass in the bottom right here he’s uh he’s leaning on a ballot box and doesn’t counting there’s his strength so he was known for you know wrecking elections stuffing the ballot box or fixing elections he padded receipts so his companies would charge millions of extra dollars to do

3:50 something and he would pocket the extras he bribed people he expected you know kickbacks i’ll appoint you to this office in return you’ve got to give me money my favorite example of his corruption is that he opened a law office and he wasn’t a lawyer but he still charged people legal fees and he was just he was incredibly powerful he’s also incredibly wealthy right no

4:12 one to this day it’s still not known how much money he pocketed because he was basically so good at being a criminal he’s also a rather large figure as you can see in his actual picture in this political cartoon so this is the person that thomas nast is criticizing in the tammany tiger so with that you sort of need to know information

4:33 maybe we can start diving into the image a little bit more here i think it’s also one thing to note that this is definitely a time where local politics was bigger than national politics we very much live in a world now where you know there’s so much media so national politics tends to take center stage

4:53 but when we’re looking at this time those local politics were the big thing so this is how people like you know boss tweed got to be as powerful as he was right and he acts so boss tweet actually started in congress but he decided you know local politics is where the action is so that’s where he ends up

5:14 you know making his mark and you can see him so again he has that he was a sort of famous really large character there he is in the crowd watching the tammany tiger so we have this imagery of sort of like a coliseum and he’s sort of being parodied as the emperor who set this tiger loose on his victims and the victims

5:35 like this one right here had uh had was carrying something called the ballot and she was wearing a crown it’s hard to see but it says republic and her sword here is broken as well so it’s almost like what what you know boss tweet is doing by being so corrupt he’s not he’s he’s attacked

5:55 the republic it’s not functioning as it should be well and everybody’s just watching like it feels like looking at this and again we can only see so many faces but the crowd seems to be very passive in this and watching and i think that struck me too was that everybody’s just like okay this is the way it is when you’re

6:17 looking at this destruction and you know the tiger is attacking things that are key principles for democracy but everybody just just like whatever we’re just watching right and i think that’s another facet of the boss tweed story that’s so interesting is that again in new york city in 1870s he provided a

6:39 lot of servants services for immigrants especially and a large percentage of the population at the time were irish or german immigrants who had no jobs no food nowhere to go the city is so dirty and boss tweed attended to those needs so he had a lot of supporters but at the same time he was also insanely corrupt he says something along the

7:00 lines of i don’t care who runs for office as long as i do the appointing and he’s counting the ballots so he’s really just he sort of made a mockery of the founding principles of how a government should work and his tiger right the tammany tiger was the mascot of his headquarters he’s looking right at us right he’s looking at us as the viewer almost to say you know are we next so

7:23 what sort of destruction he’s already taken out you know all these the republican the idea of the ballot and free elections what’s going to go next and i think that it’s an important thing too when we look at you know political cartoons especially in an era where there was a lot of immigration to the united states and not everybody spoke

7:43 english you can read pictures and those definitely mean something so the question i think that i had was those people that he’s helping and that he you know he’s helping build this life and they kind of see it as a positive what do what do they think when they see this because you know irish americans yes are

8:04 speaking english but german americans aren’t and again there’s this huge wave my family came over at this time not speaking english so if you’re to see this if you can’t read the words in the newspaper you know what kind of reaction is thomas nas looking to get from people who maybe can’t read the

8:25 articles in the newspaper right that’s a really great point because there were there were actual articles on exposes written about tweets corruption but tweed actually feared the cartoons by nast the most for that for that very reason because no matter what your you know your background you can look at this picture and figure out he’s doing something

8:45 shady right it’s pretty clear that there’s this menacing tiger it’s killing people it’s mauling people that’s generally a bad thing and he actually boss tweet actually tried to bribe thomas nast and the editor at harper’s weekly to stop with these things because he feared the reaction and of course nast refused the he refused to bribe that and his

9:07 cartoons were actually so famous and the depiction of tweed is so famous that that’s ultimately how he’s recognized and put in jail for good so he did act thomas ness does in fact take down boss tweed his images helped bring about the end of this this man who was certainly really

9:27 corrupt but again at the same time he did provide a lot of services for the immigrant community especially in new york city so again history is never straightforward there’s always many facets if you think about facets on a jewel and historians today can still argue about boss tweed and the legacy of political bosses like him

9:48 so in closing i want to take us back to our original question and ask you guys what do you think what is the role of the press whether it’s a political cartoonist like thomas nass whether it’s reporter whether it’s someone on youtube today what’s their role in ensuring that a democratic republic is still functioning we’d love to hear

10:09 from you guys and thank you so much for tuning in if you like this video be sure to punch that thumbs up button and subscribe to our channel we put out new bridge from the past episodes every other thursday and we have a lot of other videos to help you with everything us history and government we’ve also just released the prompt for our we the students essay contest

10:30 what is the relationship between equality and justice here’s the essay prompt and all the information on our website the top prize was 7 500 and you can see there’s lots of other great prizes for runners-up so definitely check that out the deadline is april 15th so thanks again everybody

10:52 take care happy new year liz thank you again for helping us take down boss tweed until next time everybody take care hi everybody