My reply to my brothers hate mail

[JHB]

13. It's worth remembering we've been through this before:

Do Mitt, Rick Santorum, and Peter King think Thomas Nast was right?

* Title: Religious liberty is guaranteed : but can we allow foreign reptiles to crawl all over us?
* Creator(s): Nast, Thomas, 1840-1902, artist
* Date Created/Published: [between 1860 and 1902]
* Medium: 1 drawing : pen and ink.
* Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-50658 (b&w film copy neg.)
* Rights Advisory: Publication may be restricted. For information see "Cabinet of American Illustration,&quot http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/111_cai.htmlAZ)
* Access Advisory: Restricted access: Materials in this collection are often extremely fragile; most originals cannot be served.
* Call Number: CAI - Nast, no. 54 (C size) [P&P]
* Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
* Notes:
o No publication information.
o (DLC/PP-1980:0080.7).
o Forms part of: Cabinet of American illustration (Library of Congress).
o Exhibit loan 4207-L.
* Subjects:
o Catholics.
o Mormans.
o Domes.
o Freedom of religion.
o Religious groups.
o Reptiles.
* Format:
o Cartoons (Commentary)
o Drawings.
* Collections:
o Cabinet of American Illustration
* Part of: Cabinet of American illustration (Library of Congress)
* Bookmark This Record:
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2010717281/

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2010717281/

“The American River Ganges”

May 8, 1875
Thomas Nast
“The American River Ganges”

Children; Education, Public Schools; New York City, Education; Religion, Roman Catholic Church; Symbols, Columbia; Women, Symbolic;

This cartoon is one of Thomas Nast's most famous. It depicts Roman Catholic clergy as crocodiles invading America's shore to devour the nation's schoolchildren--white, black, American Indian, and Chinese. (The white children are prominent in front, the rest are in the background.) The public school building stands as a fortress against the threat of theocracy, but it has been bombarded and flies Old Glory upside down to signal distress.

Education in nineteenth-century America was provided by a variety of private, charitable, public, and combined public-private institutions, with the public school movement gaining strength over the decades. A major political issue during the 1870s was whether state and municipal governments should allocate funds for religiously affiliated schools, many of which were Roman Catholic. In most public schools, the Protestant version of the Bible was read, Protestant prayers were uttered, and Protestant teachers taught Protestant moral lessons. (Notice the boy in the cartoon who protects the younger students from the Catholic onslaught carries a Bible in his coat.) Catholic (and some Protestant) leaders asked that parochial schools receive their fair share of public funds. Protestant defenders of public schools erroneously considered that request to be an attempt by Catholics to destroy the spreading public school system.
***
The publishers and staff of Harper’s Weekly, including cartoonist Thomas Nast, were mainly Protestant or secular liberals. Like most such Americans, they believed that the Roman Catholic Church was an antiquated, authoritarian institution that stood against the “Modernism” of a progressive society and democratic political institutions. Irish-Catholics in particular were suspected of being loyal primarily to the Vatican, rather than to the United States, and of not being capable of assimilation by nature or stubborn will. Furthermore, Irish-Catholics were overwhelmingly aligned with the Democratic Party, and more politically involved than other ethnic groups. The Republican newspaper was vehemently opposed to what it believed was the growing political and social influence of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States.

(more at link)
http://www.harpweek.com/09cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon.asp?Month=May&Date=8