Harper's Weekly cartoons of Thomas Nast, who was recruited in 1862 and worked with the "Weekly" for more than 20 years. Nast was a feared caricaturist, and is often called the father of American political cartooning. He was the first to use an elephant as the symbol of the Republican Party. He also drew the legendary character of Santa Claus; his version became strongly associated with the figure, who was popularized as part of Christmas customs in the late nineteenth century. "Harper's Weekly" was the most widely read journal in the United States throughout the period of the Civil War. So as
Thomas Nast Asylum to the ground. His experiences may explain his sympathy for black Americans and his "antipathy to what he perceived as the brutish, uncontrollable Irish thug". An 1876 Nast cartoon combined a caricature of Charles Francis Adams Sr with anti-Irish sentiment and anti-Fenianship. In general, his political cartoons supported American Indians and Chinese Americans. He advocated the abolition of slavery, opposed racial segregation, and deplored the violence of the Ku Klux Klan. In one of his more famous cartoons, the phrase "Worse than Slavery" is printed on a coat of arms depicting a despondent black family holding their dead child;