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The Democratic National Convention |
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| “Barnum’s New ‘What Is It’” |
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Source: Harper’s Weekly |
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Date:
August 17, 1872, p. 648
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Click to see
a large version of this cartoon |
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Complete HarpWeek Explanation:
In Nast’s “Barnum’s New ‘What Is It,’” showman P. T. Barnum, a close friend
of Greeley, is quoted in the caption praising the candidate’s character. The
title’s “What Is It” refers to a sham perpetrated by Barnum at his American
Museum in 1859. Feeding on the newly reported evolutionary theory of Charles
Darwin and on anti-black prejudice, Barnum (despite being an abolitionist) had
billed a short, black man as the “missing link” between apes and humans. Here,
Greeley fills that role by incorporating into his candidacy such contradictory
notions as free trade and protectionism, pro- and anti-temperance, and pro- and
anti-Ku Klux Klan. The Woolly Horse was another Barnum humbug, in which he took
a horse with curly hair, reversed it in its stall, and advertised it as a horse
“with his head where his tail should be.” Its placement in this cartoon
underlines Greeley’s alleged nature of pretending to be something that he was
not. The note attached to the horse mimics Nast’s charge that the hypocritical
Tribune was an partisan organ that alleged it was not an organ.
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Background: 1859 - 1871
