Visit HarpWeek.com


What I Know About... // Gratz Brown Nametag // Anything To Beat Grant // This Is Not An Organ // Clasp Hands Over The Bloody Chasm // Go West, Young Man, Go West

Besides Nast’s mastery of caricature, knowledge of classic literature and mythology, inventive mind, and impish sense of humor, the incorporation of catchphrases and symbols into his cartoons was one of his most effective, and sometimes devastating, techniques.  That skill is nowhere on better display than in his images of Horace Greeley.  This website features Nast’s Greeley cartoons organized by four catchphrases—“What I Know About…”; “Clasp Hands over the Bloody Chasm”; “Anything to…”; and “Go West, Young Man, Go West”—along with two symbols—the Gratz Brown nametag and the organ that was not an organ.  Nast’s relentless use of these epithets and emblems merged into a negative public image that helped bury the candidacy of Horace Greeley.

The phrase was popularized by Horace Greeley in the 1840's to encourage immigration to the American West, but applied by Nast in 1872 to indicate the exit of the Greeley president campaign.

October 12, 1872, p. 792
“Swinging Round the Circle”

November 2, 1872, p. 848
“We Are on the Home Stretch”

November 23, 1872, p. 905
“The Insult Returned”

November 23, 1872, p. 920
“Our Artist’s Occupation Gone”

 



 

Website design © 2001-2005 HarpWeek, LLC
All Content © 1998-2005 HarpWeek, LLC
Please submit questions to webmaster@harpweek.com