Caricature Cartoonist's Cartoonists Comic history Editorial cartooning Illustration

Thomas Nast – Good? Bad? Ugly?

Skip to comments

D. D. Degg Published: May 18, 2025 Updated: May 19, 2025 1 minute 4 comments

Throughout the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the early years of the Gilded Age, Thomas Nast used his political cartoons published in Harper’s Weekly to satirize current events, expose corruption, and even influence elections.

Kaleena Fraga for All That’s Interesting (ATI) takes a positive look at cartoonist Thomas Nast and his career.

Nast’s career began in the 1860s, and he went on to produce more than 2,000 cartoons. An ardent Republican, his cartoons were shouts of support for Abraham Lincoln, Reconstruction, and racial equality — and vicious critiques of Andrew Johnson, ex-Confederates, and carpetbaggers.

While pointing out Nast’s sympathy to the Black struggle Fraga completely ignores Nast’s bigotry toward Catholics and the Irish (though ATI includes one image of a caricatured Irishman in their gallery of 34).

For that we turn to the Catholic Historical Research Center of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia from 2018:

Nast’s anti-Irish cartoons focus on the Irish as a destructive and lying group, who endangered American society. In the immediate aftermath of the Orange Riot of July 12, 1871 in New York City, in which Irish Catholics clashed with the National Guard protecting an Irish Protestant parade, Nast drew a number of anti-Irish cartoons for Harper’s Weekly. One cartoon illustrated the Draft Riots of July 1863, where Irish Catholics attacked African-Americans throughout New York City. At the top of the drawing Nast wrote that the Irish Catholic is bound to respect “no caste, no sect, no nation, any rights,” highlighting the believed lack of respect the Irish immigrants had for American society.

Elsewhere:

Biased. Disrespectful. Offensive. All sterling job qualifications for any good editorial cartoonist. But “racist”? Woah!

On the occasion of efforts to refuse Nast entry into the New Jersey Hall of Fame, Michael Dooley for Print in 2012 takes a balanced approach in his Editorial Cartoonist Thomas Nast: Anti-Irish, Anti-Catholic Bigot?

Caricature is oversimplification, a type of dehumanization for speedy communication. It’s also a tool of Nast’s trade which he vigorously practiced during the 1800s, most notably for Harper’s Weekly. For him, party Democrats were stubborn jackasses and murderous tigers. William “Boss” Tweed was a bloated bag of ill-gotten gains and his Tammany Hall cronies were predatory vultures. But some of Nast’s lesser known works have been singled out as evidence that he was anti-Catholic and anti-Irish.

And while some of those images have been disseminated in the press, hardly any of Nast’s opponents have meaningfully dealt with their content in context…