What made the donkey and the elephant political?

lot like political season. I'm going to day to cast my ballot for Georgia to start letting everybody buy booze on Sunday. I am too. I appreciate you doing that. No, I'm voting against it. A lot of people on the a j C they had, you know, the opinion, like what do you think? And the people that were against it, we're all just like, well, you got six days of eak, Like why to change it? Why bother? You know, it's just the one day. Is it really that big of

a pain? And it's like what has lost on these people is that this is the United States of America. It's about freedom. It's not about buying booze on Sunday. It's about somebody else telling you not to when this is two thousand eleven. Yes, um, nice chuck. Yeah. Well, um, let's stop talking politics and instead let's talk animals. Let's talk biology. You know much about donkeys? Uh? No, okay, not really. Well, donkeys are a member of the horse family,

but there are different species from horse. Donkeys and mules are not the same, correct there Uh, because there are different species. It makes it really weird that they can not only mate but procreate. But donkeys and horses do get it on and with the producer mules. So, um, a mule is actually the offspring of a male donkey jack and a female horse a mayor. How I do not know that in forty years a henney is a is the offspring of a female donkey a jenny, and

a male horse stallion. So a mule or a henny can be boy or girl. It depends on what their parents were. So this is actually the second podcast where we've started with equestrian definitions. Yes, interesting, and I also want to give a little shout out to the donkey. Apparently a donkey they're very well known for stubbornness, of course, but um, apparently it is a misinterpretation as I understand it.

Of they're incredibly well defined sense of self preservation. They are not very easily frightened or um forced into doing something they think is not in their own best interest, which comes off to us as stubborn jackass donkey mule who won't go down the trail, and they're like the gold No, no, I could fall off that interesting. Yeah, so I think humans should start listening to their donkeys and to make sure that people don't accuse us of

um doncubias. Yes, I want to talk also about elephants too, because if you talk donkeys, you have to talk elephants and eventually electric eels, which we'll get too later at the tea party. No, no, no, I thought they might have had their own. I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think it's electric eels. Pretty awesome. They do have that carved up snake. Yeah, they don't tread on me snake that was carved up into the thirteen colonies,

But that's definitely not an electric eel. Elephants and are are a horse of a completely different color. A few couple of facts of them. They are, their societies are structured by female. They the if you see a group of elephants walking around, they're all female. They live in the same family their whole lives. The elephant pack is

led by a female. It's matriarchal, and males spend their whole lives like just basically doing their own thing, hanging out and then coming around to mate every once in a a while. And these lives can can live, can go for up to eighty two years. And elephants are pretty amazing animals. They are very well known to mourn, scientifically

proven to mourn they're dead. The first study that established that was in two thousand five that found that elephants will return to where their loved ones have fallen and visit their bones and skulls and tusks and want to stroke them and just kind of meditate over them for a while. That's very sad, right. So you have donkeys, you have elephants. You have American politics. That I think is as interesting as the story of how they became

symbols of politics. I would say it's more interesting, alright. It depends on your your leanings. This one was written by Sam Abramson. You remember him. He was a good guy. I have no idea. I doubt if he listens. Uh so, Thomas Nast. If you're gonna start the discussion on how the donkey and the elephant became symbols of our two political parties, there's only one place to start and end, and that is a German. Oddly enough, a German born

political satirist and illustrator, cartoonist, wood block cutter. Yeah, really named Thomas Nast, who was born in Germany, came over to New York City when he was six, and uh was a natural. He was a shoeing right off the bat with this artwork stuff. Yeah, he was pretty good, you can tell. And you've if you haven't heard of him, you've still seen his stuff somewhere out there. You've seen

a Thomas Nast illustration. Any time you think of nineteenth century UM political cartoons, what you're envisioning as a Thomas Nast illustration or Uncle Sam? It depends one. I always think of his UM flag, Thomas flag. I can't remember his name anyway, he was the one who painted that I want you, Uncle Sam. Yeah, but Nasa is the one who popularized the first images of Uncle Sam's that right. Well,

Uncle Sam was around him he was. He was the one who first put him in like a star spangled suit and made him tall and gaunt, model after Abraham Lincoln.

But Uncle Sam was, if I may uh. He was possibly named after a guy named Samuel Wilson, not Abrahamson no Ok, who was a meat packer from Troy, New York, UH in the early nineteenth century, and who was who got a great reputations being very honest, and so he got a government contract to send meat provisions to the troops UH during the War of eighteen twelve, and these crates would come arrive stamped us, and the troops came to mention that this was a quol Sam or Uncle

Sam Wilson, which came to be a symbol for the United States as a whole, and they were providing Uncle Sam's brotting food for the soldiers. In their minds, yes, it's nice. Nothing but horse me in. Santa Claus, the modern Santa Claus as we know him, was sort of captured by a Nast as well as that, right, Yeah, you got a story there, I do think so people say that Thomas Nast invented Santa Claus, and that is

it's pretty close. There was St. Nick was since your clause, there was all these these conceptions of Santa Claus based around St. Nick. Thomas Nast was the one who associated St. Nick, who still today in Germany. He's honored. He has a day on December six where people give one another gifts, but it's not Christmas. Thomas Nast took the gift giving idea associated with St. Nick, put it to Christmas for

Harper's and then added the elves as well. So the whole idea of Santa Claus coming and bringing gifts was Thomas Nast. Yeah, like eighteen sixty two, I believe, for the cover of Harper's Weekly, Thank you Thomas Nast. And then by eighteen eighty one he was fat and jolly thinks that Thomas Nast as well? How is this Santa gonna be lean and mean? Yeah, he was a little skinny and it's off putting to see a skinny Santa Clause earlier ones. All right, well you spilled the beans

on that spoiler. Harper's Weekly was where Nast worked for twenty four years from eighteen sixty two to eighteen eighty six, and um, that is where he made his name, like big time. He was influential. He was countrywide famous. I don't know about world famous. I don't know if a whole lot of people were world famous at the time. Yeah, he's definitely like a household name, I think. Yeah, he was a rock star. This is when a political cartoon

really meant something and actually held sway in elections. Not so today. Yeah, because you know, so many people were illiterate, which is kind of unfortunate, because Thomas Nast drew in a time where you could draw a bunch of stuff and be like, oh, this doesn't make any sense, and just put labels on him. Apparently you can label absolutely everything. It's like, okay, this tree. Sometimes he would come to your house and explain it to you if you still

didn't get well. And I mentioned wood cut these. Uh, he did not draw these in pen and ink until later, which would end up being his undoing. We'll get to that. But he actually carved these things. That's how they printed these. These are carvings. It's amazing, especially when you look at the detail. It's a striking Josh, I agree. I didn't realize there are wood carvings until about thirty minutes ago, so you're still reeling. Yeah, I'm a little I'm still queasy.

I still have the taste of vomit in my mouth. All right. So, politically speaking, Nast was a Republican, but Republicans at the time aren't exactly what we might think of today. It was a shift over the years. Yeah, that many people know this. It's a big eye open anything. It's like learning in eighth grade that, um, the United States like pretty much brought genocide down on Indians in America,

you know, like learning like, wait, what are you talking about? Like, yeah, there are cowboys and stuff, but what do you mean the same thing with this, Like that Republican and Democrat is fluid term, but really it's like conservative and liberal or the two opposing forces at all times. Yeah, that's

a good way to put it. Actually, And at the time, I guess Republicans were very much socially liberal and he was on board with that and ended up having problems with his own party because of that, which influenced his cartoons. We calling cartoons, I think, yeah, political cartoons. It's a it's an acceptable term. So donkey should we start there? Yeah, the donkey first came about in eighteen seventy, was the first time the donkey made its appearance, and that was

in uh and I have these printed out too. That was this one right here. The copper Head Northern Democrats were called copper Head Democrats opposed the Civil War, and he thought they were racists. Well that's what Sam calls them. Well that's what NAS thought of them, though, right right, But I think that they I think that that's over

that's an overbroad description. I think that the copper Head Democrats were made up of like there were the crux of the peace movement, right they also basically they were made up of people who said it's unconstitutional to force a country together for one part of it wants to secede. There were a lot of different voices, but yes, they were very powerful, and Nast definitely opposed them for sure.

And the copper Head is a snake, in case you didn't know that, So it's definitely a derogatory term, deadly snake. It is a deadly snake that we have right here in Georgia. Uh So, in eighteen seventy the he showed that the donkey kicking a dead lion the donkey, and like you said, he would just literally label them. He would write words on the body of the animals saying this is what this is. Uh, no subtext. The donkey was the copper Head Press, which was he was taking

a jab at the press, not necessarily the party. And then the lion was Edwin and Stanton Lincoln, Secretary of War. It was dead and dead in the photo and it looks like there's a little eagle looking on even like what are you doing? But the eagles not labels. And I think that's the capital in the background. Yeah, I

think so. So yeah, he he would just write on it, like on the side of the donkey it says copper Head Press and it looks like have you heard of I think his name is Vim vander Wall or something like that. He he came up with the cloaca machine. He's an artist from the Netherlands. Uh. He has has like this whole exhibit where he like tattoos pigs really yeah, and like like elaborate tattoos and it looks a lot

like this. I really like the woodcut or just that style that like the donkey having writing on the side of it. Okay, I got you, it's been graffito. So that is um. That was the first appearance of the donkey. Uh. The next one was in eighteen seven, be four, when Republican Ulysses s Grant Ulysses was vying for a potential third term, which freaked a lot of people out right. Well, he freaked people out twice. Did he try to do

that twice? Well, they tried to get him to run for a third consecutive term in eighteen seventy six, but he pooh pooed it. But then he went and traveled abroad and came back and said, I'm a better man. I think I could be president for a third time, third non consecutive term in eight Yeah, which is why that that this third term panic. The eighteen seventy four cartoon was when people were like, well, he can't. You can't have a three term president, even though you could constitutionally,

that's right. So if you look at this one, this one is like, this is crazy. This looks like a Grateful Dead album cover or something. It's got a donkey in sheep's clothing labeled Caesarism, obviously referencing Julius Caesar is some mad, power hungry tyrant. And then there's all sorts of other stuff going on, and we'll get to the as the elephant plays a part in this one as well. I like the giraffe a lot on that one. It was kind of up where he looks like he's wearing

a vest. Yeah, he's wearing some sort of a suit. Giraffe in a suit. And that was called third term Panic. Yeah. But again, even though he was symbolizing the Democratic Press mainly with the donkey, it's sort of stuck is the Democratic Party even though that wasn't in his original intent? Is that right? Um? I don't know. I don't know if like he I don't think he originally intended it, but I think over time he just came to see

it as I think it. Yeah, popularly was picked up and kind of forced him to use it later on. You know. But even though the Democrats still haven't, that's not their uh their symbol officially, they've never adopted the brain jackasses their official party symbol. I wonder why, although the Republicans have they've adopted their symbol. That's true. But there there's some stuff in that third Term Panic thing, um that kind of pops up that was clear really

important to Nast, Like inflation. There's like a plank he wrote inflation on. So apparently at the time there was a big struggle going on about abandoning the gold standard, or printing um as much silver as you wanted, or issuing paper so you could basically cause inflation so people could pay off their debts so they could buy stuff more cheaply, that kind of thing. And apparently Nast opposed that the inflation because that's like a plank that's broken

over this pit. That the elephant the Republican vote, I think is what it is. Chaos, Right, there's chaos because farmers can pay their bills kind of thing. So he was like, he was definitely a social liberal, but I get from this that he was also not a populist, Like I think he liked people in theory but not in practice. Right, And then you know this is important because he was a guy who only drew what he believed in, which would also further prove to be his

undoing later on. Yeah, but you gotta take your hat off to somebody like that. You know, Well, he'd made his name. I guess he was like, do you know who I am? I'm the nasty man. I'm not gonna draw anything I don't believe in. Uh so, what where are we here? There was another example, um, a presidential candidate grabbing a donkey labeled Democratic Party by the tail. Yeah, so that was Thomas F. Bayard. Yeah, and he was

grabbing it by the tail. He was actually one of those guys who fought to repeal, um the issuance of paper money legal tender that doesn't really mean anything, rather than use gold. And so I guess Nasty approved of him, even though he's a Democrat. And that's this one right here, right yeah, And that's uh, he's he's trying to keep the donkey from finding falling into a pit another pit labeled financial chaos. It's very popular motif at the time,

I guess. And then in the background of this one you do see the dead Republican Party elephant with is that Lincoln hovering above him? Probably I think Nas kind of had a thing for for Lincoln had a thing for him. It's strictly in an idol way with an Oh, so that is the donkey That fairly summarized how it

got started. Yeah, like you said, I mean he started just kind of using it and associating it with the Copperhead Democrats, Democratic Press, and then ultimately people just said, well, I can't read, but I see that you're making fun of the Democrats, and that's the donkeys. So the Democrats are donkeys, and I said, okay, we'll go with that. Oh and also, by the way, the Wizard of Oz apparently is a popular allegory for UM politics at the time,

including that whole gold standard abandonment. Was it meant to be? It? Yeah? Frank Baum, who who wrote it was a political writer UM for many many years before he wrote it. And the gold the yellow brick road is the gold standard. And then Dorothy's shoes originally were silver, not ruby, and so silver and gold was a call out to this UM free silver idea of printing sixteen silver coins to

every gold coin printed to make money cheaper and abundant. Right, So interesting, a lot of a lot of subtle stuff going on in the late nineteenth century. You know, Well, they're way more obvious now, I guess because they can be. Yeah, at least we don't label our political cartoons as much. It's still a tradition that's upheld. It is. You just don't see words all over the place. I don't read

a lot of political cartoons anymore. To you I just don't run into him very often, but I almost always enjoy him when I do upentially that Mike Luckovich guy, he is good. He is a local boy too, Yeah, luck of it just good. You know, I'm a big family Circus fan. Yeah, that's rarely political. You know when Jeffy like tracks a month through the through the House and it's like, Jeffy, have you seen the altered version of those? There's altered versions of everything. These are pretty funny.

They're really really dirty, but they're funny. Dirty is not there? Or they just like um filthy? Yeah they felt okay, alright, So moving on to the elephant. Uh, this was Nast's party, the Republicans at the time, so obviously his cartoons about the elephant are going to be more positive, I guess, or sad. Yeah, true, like the dying elephant. Yeah. I think he probably intuitively knew the elephants mourn they're dead, which makes you sad when you think about elephants, which

is why you choose the elephant. I wonder if he knew that. I don't think you did. That's appropriate though, before he actually ever, it keeps saying penned in here, but carved his first elephant. Um. It was used twice before, once in eighteen sixty four, uh, in a Lincoln campaign literature piece, and then in eighteen seventy two by Harper's but it wasn't until eighteen seventy four that he used it, So I can imagine the Lincoln use of it was

very intended to be derogatory. Yeah, probably all jackasses. So that's uh or turn panic. The one we already talked about was the first Um Republican elephant that he had carved. Okay, but the first appearance of the Republican elephant and the Democratic um donkey together as the as those two is the representative the whole party was the Stranger Things Have Happened cartoon where he's got the donkey by the tail. As far as I know, it's the first. That's what

that one was called, Stranger Things have Happened. Uh. In eighteen seventy six, there was one called the Political Situation. Pretty straight up, Uncle Sam is confused. He is labeled the vote of the people, and there's a two headed elephant choosing to decide which road Democratic road of the Republican road to go down. That's fairly self explanatory. I think it is, but it's also kind of confusing because

Uncle Sam's confused. So as he's saying the Republicans can go one of two ways at the time, Well, no, because there it's two headed, so I would imagine it was it's more representative of the two already system. I think Nasty was pretty drunk that day, So, uh, what else do we have here? Um? There was the oh my favorite, I haven't seen it yet. Did you print it out? The one with the tombstone? No, I couldn't find that one. I thought this was very um sweet,

but nasty. Apparently, when Rutherford B. Hayes uh ran for president he won the eight seventy six election, that um that Grant didn't go for the third term four right, and Hayes apparently said that he would only run once. And I guess he wasn't a very well like guy because he was one of those presidents who won through the electoral vote but lost the popular vote, and apparently lost the popular vote pretty bad, and so his whole presidency was in no way, shape or form a mandate.

It was it was very representative of the fact that this country, our country was still very much torn apart from the Civil War, and so nas created this cartoon where this um elephant that Sam describes as bruised and battered is crouching down at a tombstone of the Democratic Party, which I thought was pretty cool because it's like he had the sense that there was still, no matter how um acrimonious things got, that these two parties were still

American parties, that there's still a whole wild world out there for us to hate, and why are we hating each other? You know, Yeah, that's sort of a nice sentiment. Yeah, but I don't want to characterize nastas uh an isolationists or even a nativist, like he had one of his

Uncle Sam paintings or I'm sorry carvings. Was um Uncle Sam and Columbia right Liberty uh hosting a Thanksgiving dinner with all the peoples of the world, which included some Chinese people, some um black people, some Native American Indians, uh, and uh a host of others, but not the Irish. I don't think the Irish were president. But it was like it's world or suffrage for all, you know, equality for everyone in the world. Come on, comal, you're all invited.

It was pretty cool. He's definitely not a bigot, as far as I could tell you, it does seemed like it. Uh. So you know what standpoints out is it? And it's true. It's kind of striking that a hundred and fifty years after this or so, that these are still the symbols. I mean, the Republicans officially adopted the elephant. But he points out that a lot of that was due to just how influential and popular Nast was at the time. It just became part of the national fabric because of him.

There was some good quotes about him after well, while he's working. Even apparently, Um Abraham Lincoln called Nasta's quote best recruiting sergeant during the eighteen sixty four re election. And this is while he was traveling around the country heckling, Uh, what's his name? Oh, Stephen, it's not Stephen Decatur. What was that guy's name? I don't know. We'll go with Ambrose Beers, even though it's not right. I can't believe we don't remember that guy's name. I know, my head

is just bulging. Uh. Mark Twain said that Nast won a prodigious victory for grant I mean, for civilization in progress. It's Mark Twain for you. What a guy. He can turn it price. So he Um, you said that he kind of gave up his UH career in a lot of ways by being stubborn as a donkey. Yeah. Um. Especially he was apparently in very good with Fletcher Harper,

who founded Harper's Weekly. Um, do you read Harper's. No, it's monthly, it's Lewis Lapham just left and I got into it right before he left, and I got sucked into Harper's and then he left, and now I'm like, it's just not is good? Why Why did this happen to me? Why does everything bad happen to me? But it's still it's very good. And it's been around since the mid nineteenth century, which is pretty impressive for a magazine, and endured endors. But Junior came aboard and UM didn't

really side with um. Thomas nast right, Yeah, I mean Na's had a lot of freedom under under Fletcher Harper, but Joe Jr. Kind of tightened down the ranks, and it's like, hey, man, don't be so square. People want to be entertained. So there was a bit of a shift and UH in in the the way American public wanted to you know, what they wanted to read in magazines, and then uh, people wanted to not be bothered anymore. Yeah,

they were stick of it. So the other death Noel though, was was they went to photochemical reproduction and they didn't do the woodblock cuttings anymore. And apparently woodblock, even though I mean it looks to me like incredibly detailed, it gives you a lot of leeway to make mistakes that you don't get with pen and ink and paper. So his shortcomings all of a sudden stood out. They're like, this guy kind of sucks. It's just it's just not

true Santa Claus. Yeah, so he he ended up like, um, penniless as you as you love the term, Um, I do you don't you love the term penniless. I was listening to an old podcast and you're like, I hate that term. It's so no. One doesn't happen. He does the Niagara Falls one. She's I need to lighten up

back then. Huh. But anyway, he was very much broke um and he tried to He tried to open his own uh paper, Nast Weekly, which lasted six months, and luckily he had a friend in Teddy Roosevelt, right, yeah, and he he appointed him to Council General to Ecuador and NASA. I guess it's like, all right, I guess I'll go to Ecuador. It's because there's money there, because I'm Penniless's better than doing nothing. And it actually was not better than doing nothing, because he got yellow fever

there and died six months later. Yeah. Uh so that's a pretty weird end of that guy, if you ask me, But it was. He was sixty two and at the turn of the last last century, the last last turn of the century. He uh, sixty two is not bad. It's a pretty good run for back then, especially being a household name wentce your celebrities over. You might as well, I mean, you're dead anyway, and that just hasn't You haven't actually died yet, but you might as well be,

you know. So there you go, the donkey and the the elephant. If if you feel like we've explained this, if you now understand it and gotten to the bottom of it, you were not paying attention because it's still as convoluted as ever. It's not all that's all from that. Well, don't you wish though that there was like some sort of like, oh, here's the reason why he chose the donkey. Oh, of course he would choose an elephant. It's totally intuitive. No,

it's the ramblings of a madman. You used to carve stuff into woodblocks and Fletcher Harper published it for the consumption of everybody else. But now you know, knowing is half the battle the track. So if you want to learn more about Thomas Nast, if you want to read one of the extraordinarily rare Samuel Abramson articles on the site, you can type in the words why are a donkey and an elephant the symbols of the Democratic and Republican

parties question mark. You could probably also just type in donkey and elephant and it will bring it up. So h I think I said that you should type it into the search bar, and if I didn't, you should type it into the search bar at how stuffworks dot com. Since I said that, it's time now for listener mail.

Josh Bison feedback from Canada Burlington, Ontario, specifically, guys, your recent Bison podcast put me uh in mind one of the coolest experiences of my life when I lived out in Alberta, I'd often go hiking and Elk Island National Park. I was halfway around one of the parks longer trails one day when I looked down, I saw a fresh buffalo chip. What's that is? Scat? As I pondered what this meant, I heard a snort and about ten to fifteen meters in front of me, which is a length

that I don't understand. It's roximately okay, it was ards okay, I get yards. Uh ten to fifteens in front of me was a bison. I froze. I was alone, hadn't seen another soul on the trail. I knew roughly eight kilometers whatever that is from the road, I'm sorry, from the trailhead in either direction, and I knew uh. This animal decided to charge, I was as good as dead, and we stared each other down for a few minutes. I don't know what was going through its mind, but

I was weighing my options. If I turned around and it decided at a charge, I might not hear it coming and wouldn't be able to take evasive action. If I went forward, I might provoke it and be in deep troubled. I knew I couldn't stay there all day, so I decided to take a single step towards it. To Gage's response, good move, I think. I moved towards it. It gave a snort and turned its head away from me and ran into the woods to my right. Very cool,

I thought, No sooner had I thought that. Then from my left came a thundering herd of bison stampeding across the trail. There must have been twenty to thirty of them running in front of me, following their lookout. That was a scout, I guess, into the forest. I stood there, utterly, all struck for several minutes before I decided to move forward to where they had just been. For the next

fifteen minutes, everywhere, I bet. For the next fifteen minutes or so, I kept looking over my shoulder just in case they were hiding behind a tree, ready to pounce on me like a giant cartoon kangaroo. Interesting imagination. So they didn't pounce. He made it back say, and he just says, if anyone finds himself in this situation, probably won't happen. Don't do what I did. I got lucky. These are wild animals, not petting zoo bison. I could have easily been trampled and left to die. So that

is Gordon C from Burlington, Ontario, Canada. Weird weird ending there. He doesn't give any any suggestions of what to do. No, but he did say that it was the most amazing experience of his life, seeming the thundering herd of bison right in front of him. I will bet I thought it was pretty cool. Yeah. Um, I want to add something from the Bison podcast. We got a tweet from some guy recently was saying, hey, I was really disappointed you guys used the word Indian instead of Native American.

And I was like, oh, yeah, that's a smart guy. Well, how about I provide you with the link to an article that has a poll that shows that in clear for of all Indian Native American Indians, UM prefer the term Indian over Native American, prefer Native American, and then like six percent or whatever the rest is prefer something else. Don't call me, I'll call you all right. So the the not a majority, but very close to it for

Indian over Native Americans. So chew on that pal. We were doing something right for once, and he goes, no, I'm talking about people from India are offended by that like me, And I was like, oh, you're to handle is Sanjay something? And I haven't responded yet, but I hadn't considered that. Yeah, I knew we were doing right by Indians of North America, but I hadn't considered how Indians of India also known as Asian Indians felt about it.

And I'm curious to know. So I would like to hear from everybody, uh, if from Asian Indians and North American Indians. And I'm sure I'm just like offending everybody in any way, shape or form right now, but like figure out how to establish this. I want to know, how do you consider that either? And even if you're not Asian Indian or American Indian, yes, uh, we want to hear from you. If you have a good suggestion to about how to end this conundrum. Uh, you can tweet to us like Sanjay did at s Y s

K podcast. Um, you can uh go to Facebook also known as the the fifty thousand at Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know, and you can send us a plain old fashioned email at Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast Stuff from the future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are you