The Democratic and Republican parties are the two main political parties in the United States. Since 1853, all U.S. presidents who have served in the White House have come from one of these two parties. This election is expected to be no exception.
The Republican and Democratic parties in the United States have long used the “elephant” and “donkey” as their election symbols. But why is the elephant the symbol for Republicans? And why did the Democrats choose the donkey as their symbol? To answer these questions, we have to go back quite a bit in history.
Andrew ‘Jackass’ Jackson
In the early years of the United States as an independent nation, neither of today’s two major political parties existed. George Washington’s party was called the Federalist Party, while Thomas Jefferson’s was known as the Democratic-Republican Party.
In the early 19th century, the Federalist Party dissolved. In the 1824 presidential election, four candidates ran, all from the Democratic-Republican Party. Among them was Andrew Jackson, a former military general. Initially, he was positioned as a “dummy candidate,” intended to reduce the vote count for another heavyweight or primary candidate.
Republican Elephan
The rise of the Democratic Party led to the dissolution of the Democratic-Republican Party. Another party called the Whig Party took its place in national politics. Members of this party, including Abraham Lincoln, opposed the imperialistic mentality of the Democratic Party.
However, in the mid-nineteenth century, this party became divided over the issue of the abolition of slavery. Lincoln and the anti-slavery Whigs came together to form a new political party—the Republican Party.
At the same time, Harper’s Weekly magazine was launched, where a cartoonist named Thomas Nast took political cartoons to new heights. According to CNN, he is considered the first famous political cartoonist in the United States and is also referred to as the father of American cartooning.
For the sake of political and social satire, Nast used a lot of animals in his cartoons. He often depicted Democrats as donkeys (the party’s symbol) in his political cartoons.
After Lincoln’s rise to power in the 1860s and the abolition of slavery through the Civil War, the Republican Party became quite popular, and their voter base increased significantly.
