He created a modern version of Santa Claus (based on the traditional German figures of Saint Nicholas and Weihnachtsmann) and the political symbol of the elephant for the Republican Party (GOP).

Nast was born in military barracks in Landau, Bavaria, Germany (now in Rhineland-Palatinate), as his father was a trombonist in the Bavarian 9th regiment band.

His father held political convictions that put him at odds with the Bavarian government, so in 1846, Joseph Nast left Landau, enlisting first on a French man-of-war and subsequently on an American ship.

[11] His drawings appeared for the first time in Harper's Weekly on March 19, 1859,[12] when he illustrated a report exposing police corruption; Nast was 18 years old at that point.

The authoritarian papacy in Rome, ignorant Irish Americans, and corrupt politicians at Tammany Hall figured prominently in his work.

[30] In 1863, he witnessed the New York City draft riots in which a mob composed mainly of Irish immigrants burned the Colored Orphan Asylum to the ground.

In one of his more famous cartoons, the phrase "Worse than Slavery" is printed on a coat of arms depicting a despondent black family holding their dead child; in the background is a lynching and a schoolhouse destroyed by arson.

Two members of the Ku Klux Klan and White League, paramilitary insurgent groups in the Reconstruction-era South, shake hands in their mutually destructive work against black Americans.

[33] Despite Nast's championing of minorities, Morton Keller writes that later in his career "racist stereotypy of blacks began to appear: comparable to those of the Irish—though in contrast with the presumably more highly civilized Chinese.

He introduced into American cartoons the practice of modernizing scenes from Shakespeare for a political purpose, referencing 23 of his 37 plays in more than 100 cartoons—sometimes with just a recognizable line or two, but generally with pictorial content.

[40] Tweed and his associates—Peter Barr Sweeny (park commissioner), Richard B. Connolly (controller of public expenditures), and Mayor A. Oakey Hall—defrauded the city of many millions of dollars by grossly inflating expenses paid to contractors connected to the Ring.

When Tweed attempted to escape justice in December 1875 by fleeing to Cuba and from there to Spain, officials in Vigo were able to identify the fugitive by using one of Nast's cartoons.

His cartoons were influential in deciding five presidential elections: Abraham Lincoln (1864); Ulysses S. Grant (1868 and 1872); Rutherford B. Hayes (1876)—all Republicans—and Democrat Grover Cleveland (1884).

His biting cartoons ridiculed the losers: George B. McClellan (1864); Horatio Seymour (1868); Horace Greeley (1872); Samuel J. Tilden (1876); and James G. Blaine (1884).

In addition to his talent, creativity and the repetitive impact of his cartoons, Nast benefited from his lack of meaningful competition before Puck arrived in 1877, and from the financial strength, editorial consistency and reach of Harper's Weekly.

America's leading illustrated newspaper's circulation was about 120,000 during the Civil War, 200,000 during subsequent presidential elections, and almost 300,000 during the height of the Tweed campaign.

[47] The single most important and influential cartoon that Nast ever drew appeared in Harper's Weekly on August 24, 1864 (post-dated September 3) as the Democratic National Committee was assembling in Chicago to nominate McClellan (whom Lincoln had fired as his top Union general two years earlier) for president.

Nast's scathing caricature featured an arrogant, exultant Jefferson Davis shaking hands with a crippled Union soldier who—with his head bowed and his only leg shackled to a ball and chain—humbly accepted it.

As Davis's boot stomped on a Union grave and broke the sword of Northern Power, the cat-o'-nine-tails in his left hand was ready to flog his vanquished enemies.

Lincoln's reelection managers took Nast's cartoon, added "The Rebel Terms of Peace," and made more than a million copies as campaign posters.

[55] Nast opposed inflation of the currency, notably with his famous rag-baby cartoons, and he played an important part in securing Rutherford B. Hayes' ultimate victory in the presidential election in 1876.

[58] The death of the Weekly's publisher, Fletcher Harper, in 1877 resulted in a changed relationship between Nast and his editor George William Curtis.

[60] Curtis believed that the powerful weapon of caricature should be reserved for "the Ku-Klux Democracy" of the opposition party, and did not approve of Nast's cartoons assailing Republicans such as Carl Schurz and Charles Sumner who opposed policies of the Grant administration.

[62] Between 1877 and 1884, Nast's work appeared only sporadically in Harper's, which began publishing the milder political cartoons of William Allen Rogers.

[65] In 1884, Curtis and Nast agreed that they could not support the Republican candidate James G. Blaine, a proponent of high tariffs and the spoils system whom they perceived as personally corrupt.

[77] Although no such position was available, President Theodore Roosevelt was an admirer of the artist and offered him an appointment as the United States' Consul General to Guayaquil, Ecuador in South America.

[77] During a subsequent yellow fever outbreak, Nast remained on the job, helping numerous diplomatic missions and businesses escape the contagion.

[81] The Thomas Nast Award[82] has been presented each year since 1968 by the Overseas Press Club[83] to an editorial cartoonist for the "best cartoons on international affairs."

Past winners include Signe Wilkinson, Kevin (KAL) Kallaugher, Mike Peters, Clay Bennett, Mike Luckovich, Tom Toles, Herbert Block, Tony Auth, Jeff MacNelly, Dick Locher, Jim Morin, Warren King, Tom Darcy, Don Wright and Patrick Chappatte.

OPC President Pancho Bernasconi stated "Once we became aware of how some groups and ethnicities were portrayed in a manner that is not consistent with how journalists work and view their role today, we voted to remove his name from the award.