In 1754, Benjamin Franklin, upset by the inability of the colonies to collaborate during an era marked by escalating conflicts with the French, Indian tribes and the British, decided to run a woodcut in his Pennsylvania Gazette that would underline his message of “Join or Die.” The resulting woodcut of serpent divided into thirteen segments, not only immediately entered the cultural lexicon of the United States, but became its first political cartoon as well.

By the 1870s, the influence of editorial cartoonists had waned little and would continue to affect the democratic process. When William “Boss Tweed,” the commissioner of New York City’s Tammany Hall, declared that newspaper reports of political machine’s corruption were inconsequential, since his constituents couldn’t read, Thomas Nast of Harper’s Weekly took it as a challenge. His response was four years worth of cartoons that exposed the greed and intimidation behind Tweed’s operation so plainly that even the city’s non-English speaking immigrant population took note. Nast’s likenesses of Tweed were so accurate and widely known that after the disgraced leader fled to Spain to avoid prosecution in 1875, the cartoons were used to identify and apprehend him. Nast later went on to design such instantly recognizable icons as the Republican Party’s elephant, the Democratic Party’s Donkey and the common red-and-white clad, jolly Santa Claus that we know today.

Another important artist in the field was J.N. “Ding” Darling of the Des Moines Register, who, from 1900 to 1949, depicted the impact of humans upon the environment. Darling’s commentaries on the subject were so apt that President Franklin Roosevelt appointed him chief of the agency now known as the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 1934. While in the service of the government, he outlined the foundations of the National Wildlife Preserve program, which today has more than 500 locations across the country dedicated to protection of threatened species and their habitats.

But perhaps the 20th century’s most famous political cartoonist is Herbert Block, better known by the signature he left one his work: Herblock. In the major first episode of his seventy-year tenure at the Washington Post, he began a pen-and-ink crusade against Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Communist with hunt of the 1940s and 50s. It was during that time that Block coined the term “McCarthyhism” in one of his pieces. He would eventually win three Pulitzer Prizes for his work and, upon his death in 2001, contributed his sizeable assets towards the establishment of a foundation for civil rights and poverty awareness.

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