Christmas in the American Civil War "the best recruiting sergeant the North ever had". Nast was not the only one to use Christmas as a propaganda tool. On the Union side, "The New York Herald" also engaged in propaganda. One illustration published in the paper included Santa Claus fuming that he could not reach southern children, due to the northern blockade. On the Confederate side, "The Richmond Examiner" described Santa to its young readers as "a Dutch toy monger" who was a New York/New England "scrub" and Hottentot that had nothing to do with traditional Virginian celebrations of Christmas. Even through the war was over, Nast
Thomas Nast Fredericks and Theodore Kaufmann, and then at the school of the National Academy of Design. In 1856, he started working as a draftsman for "Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper". His drawings appeared for the first time in "Harper's Weekly" on March 19, 1859, when he illustrated a report exposing police corruption; Nast was 18 years old at that point. In February 1860, he went to England for the "New York Illustrated News" to depict one of the major sporting events of the era, the prize fight between the American John C. Heenan and the English Thomas Sayers sponsored by George Wilkes,