The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1878-10-05
An English Estimate OF Thomas Mast,

The following paragraphs are taken from
an appreciative paper in recent number
OF Tie Week-a London literary and politi
cal journal. Mr.. Mast, who has spent part
of the Summer abroad, has returned home in
season to take hand in the exciting politi-
cal campaign which has just opened:
There is now sojourning in London a
remarkable, indeed representative man
the caricaturist, par excellence, of the
United States OF America So little does
the average Briton know, or perhaps care
to know, of the prominent personages of
that country, that the name pretixed to
this article will in all probability be un-
familiar to him. lie never heard Of Thos.
Mast or Of his doings. Yet both have at
tanned a peculiar and noteworthy celebrity
with thirty millions of English speaking
people on the other side of the Atlantic.
Question any ardent American politician
about Mast, and, according to his party
predictions, he will either express fervcnt
admiration or intense dislike Ask an
break out into double shotted abuse. Com
monty the sentiment obtained from non
politicians would run very much as follows:
'Oh, Tom Mast, he's great beyond DISPUTE
the best known and most popular of our
caricaturists. The other fellows can't hold
a candle to him. How this position was
achieved we propose to set forth in the
present article.
During the last two years of the Ameri-
can civil! war there appeared in Harpsr's
Weekly many engravings which presently
attracted public attention. Besides depict
ing imaginatively the various phases of
that tremendous conflict, the drawings
often partook Of political-alegoric char
actcr, being partisan, or rather patriotic
appeals to the Northern States They
were, so to speak, at once poen, and
speeches, arguing the case to the eye, al
ways forcible, and sometimes conclusively
These broad, bold, striking pictorial pre-
sentiments did the work of many words,
and with directuess and eloquence which
no words could convey. They were serious
and dramatic, like the times Although
hastily produced, and for temporary pur-
poses, and by no means faultless either in
design or execution, these cartoons, as they
were popularity termed, evinced much orr
ginality OF conception, freedom of manner,
lofty appreciation of national ideas and
action, and a large artistic instiuct-in
short, that combination of merits which
might we'll deserve the praise implied by
the word genius. 1t was soon understood
that they were the work of a young artist
named Thomas Mast
After giving an account OF Mr.. Nast's
boyhood and carly experience as an artist,
with which our readers are already familiar,
the writer refers to his visit to Europe in
1860, and then continues:
Immediately he began to paint pictures
in oil, suggested by his Italian experience;
but the commencement of much greater
struggle soon attracted his heart and III ind
toward il, and, in the year lSG2, hc origi-
mated the remarkable series of illustrations
y
Weekly. 1t was the secession war, writes
Parton, in his book on Cdricature and other
Comic DIRT, that changed him from a row.
ing lad, with a swift pencil for sale, into a
of the time. Hdrper's Weekly, circulating
in every town, army, camp, fort, and ship,
placed the whole country within his reach
and he gave forth, from time to time, those
powerful emblematic pictures that reused
the citizen and checred the soldier. In
these early works, produced amidst the
narrowing anxieiies of the war, the seri-
Gus element was of necessity dominant,
and it was this quality that gave them so
much influence. 1t was not till the war
was over, and President Andrew johnson
began to swing around the circle that
Mr.. Nast's pictures became caricatures
Very savage caricatuIes they were, too,
comparable only 10 the fierce, free, and
ierocious sketches Of Gilray in the DAYS of
our grandfathers, but untainted by his
grossness and vulgarity. Soon Mast be-
politics, his Cartoons being quite as iuiluen-
tial as the most impassioned editorials or
iervent stump speeches. Always he ad-
hered to the Republican or Free-soil party,
and poured an unceasing stream of con
tempt and indignation upon all attempts
at reaction and compromise with the
South involving any surrender of the
great principles upon which the war had
been waged. Inevitably, therefore, he be-
came an ardent admiter of General Grant,
and did great deal toward eievating that
victorious soldier to the Presidency in 1863,
IS also in securing him anot her four years
tenure of office in 1878. So unsparing,
indeed, were his attacks upon poor Horace
Greeley, the rival candidate A man utterly
untitled for the post, and only brought to
run for it through an anomalous, if not
scandal"us, conjunction of circumstances
conceivable but in American politics. so
ridiculous did Mast render his many pccu
lia.iiics, that his henchmen of the New
York Tribune actually denounced the artist
~ It's Nutu on MS can
vass, began one of his speeches with. You
see, after all, that | am hun.dn' Grant.
on the other hand, paid as significant
compliment to his champion; for when
some very foolish person asked him whom
he regarded as the most notable person
developed by the war, he shrewdy replied,
think Thomas Mast ~
After describing the we'll known reginae
of the "Tammauy Ring the writer
speaks thus of Mr.. Nast's part in its de.
struction:
- He scourged the criminals as with
whip of scorpions. He drew the chief of
the gang SO often and 30 vllainously that
Twced's very confederates began to be
ashamed of being seen in his company.
Tweed himself declared that he was get
ting to look like his counterfeit present
ment. That coarse obese figure, those ill.,
sclcnt moony eyes, that ridiculous enor-
nous diamond in the shirt front, glared at
you from every street corner, and became