TOW #18 – Burly Tweed Cartoon by Thomas Nast

Thomas Nast's political cartoon portraying Burly Tweed

Thomas Nast’s cartoon featuring Burly Tweed, often portrayed as an overweight politician during the Gilded Age, had a significant impact in lessening Tweed’s power in New York City’s Tweed Ring. Placed in a position of power and control, Tweed manipulated the citizens of New York to fund his personal wealth, a sum of $200 million. Recognizing the apparent flaws of Tweed, Nast portrays him as a large figure with a money bag for a head to speak out against his fraud. Because “[h]onest citizens were cowed into silence [and p]rotesters found their tax assessments raised,” (Kennedy 505) Nast was placed in the difficult position of speaking out against Tweed’s fraud to the citizens of New York City. By using a money bag in place of Tweed’s head, Nast constructs an argument that many politicians, particularly Tweed, abuse their power to overrule the law. Additionally, Nast characterizes tweed by emphasizing his large size, particularly to emphasize his power over the government. Likewise, this portrayal of Tweed does not reflect him well, immediately assisting Nast to accomplish his purpose of showing the wrongdoings of Tweed and have him face prosecution. Tweed stands with his hands in his pockets to further the idea that he is hiding something from the government – an enormous sum of money that drove him to “[employ] bribery, graft, and fraudulent elections” (Kennedy 505). Evidently, Nast is taking a stance against a trend in the Gilded Age in which individuals were able to bypass the law for their own motivations. Furthermore, as speaking out individually against Tweed was proven ineffective by his retaliations, Nast was successful in relaying to the citizens of New York City that Tweed was wrongfully taking money. In drawing a money bag in place of his head and putting his hands in his pockets, Nast communicates nonverbally that change is necessary and that Tweed should face prosecution.

Works Cited

Bovsun, Mara. “How a Series of Political Cartoons by Artist Thomas Nast Helped Send William 'Boss' Tweed to Prison.” NY Daily News, 12 Dec. 2015, www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/ink-clink-cartoons-send-boss-tweed-jail-article-1.2463810.

Kennedy, David M., et al. “The Era of Good Stealings.” The American Pageant, 13th ed., Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, MA, 2006, pp. 505–506.