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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 announcement that Greeley's newspaper, the New York Tribune, would not be a party organ during the campaign was mocked as hypocritical and false by Nast's slogan attached to a hand organ and other musical instruments.

May 25, 1872, p. 416

June 8, 1872, p. 448

July 6, 1872, p. 536

August 24, 1872, p. 664

August 31, 1872, p. 668

September 7, 1872, p. 689

September 28, 1872, p. 745

September 28, 1872, pp. 752-753

October 12, 1872, p. 792

October 19, 1872, p. 813

November 2, 1872, p. 848

November 9, 1872, pp. 872-873

November 16, 1872, pp. 896-897

November 23, 1872, pp. 912-913

 



 

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