In a cartoon that first appeared in Harper’s Weekly in 1874, Thomas Nast drew a donkey clothed in lion’s skin, intimidating the rest of the animals at the zoo. One of those animals was the elephant that some labeled “The Republican Vote.” That’s all it took for the elephant to become associated with the Republican Party. During the 1870s, Nast used the elephant to represent Republicans in additional cartoons, and by 1880 other artists were using the same symbol for the party.
This 1874 Nast cartoon was the first notable appearance of the Republican elephant (cartoon is in the public domain).
