William F. Nast William F. Nast William Frederick Nast (1840–1893) was an American diplomat and entrepreneur. He was the third president of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. Nast was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on June 14, 1840, the son of Methodist religious leader William Nast. From 1861 to 1865 he served at the American Consulate in Stuttgart, Germany. Upon his return to the United States, Nast entered the brokerage business in New York, New York. On September 2, 1868, Nast became president of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, a position he held for less than a month, ending on
Thomas Nast and independents. Nast expressed anti-Irish sentiment by depicting them as violent drunks. He used Irish people as a symbol of mob violence, machine politics, and the exploitation of immigrants by political bosses. Nast's emphasis on Irish violence may have originated in scenes he witnessed in his youth. Nast was physically small and had experienced bullying as a child. In the neighborhood in which he grew up, acts of violence by the Irish against black Americans were commonplace. In 1863, he witnessed the New York City draft riots in which a mob composed mainly of Irish immigrants burned the Colored Orphan