Election
1898 Political Cartoons in the News and Observer
Most late nineteenth-century newspapers made no pretense
of objectivity, and the staunchly Democratic News and Observer
was no exception. Under the editorship of Josephus Daniels, who purchased
the paper in 1894, the News and Observer was the closest thing
the Democrats had to an official party paper. In his efforts to convince
North Carolinians to vote Democratic, Daniels made extensive use of political
cartoons. During the 1896 campaign, the paper featured several cartoons
by Norman Jennett, a young artist from Wayne County, N.C. In the summer
of 1898, as that year's campaign began to gather speed, Daniels again
called on Jennett, who was in New York pursuing an art career. Jennett
returned to Raleigh in August and began drawing cartoons that would run
regularly through the election in November. Daniels described their method
of working:
He and I would confer daily on the character of the cartoons. He eagerly devoured the editorial page to see what I was writing about. He would then draw a suggestion of a cartoon and bring it in to me and we would decide together what particular Republican or Populist deserved to be hit over the head that day (Editor in Politics, p. 148).
Jennett's cartoons appeared nearly every day, and were
often featured prominently above the fold on the front page of the
paper. After the Democratic victory in November, Jennett was given
credit for the part he played in the party's success. Democratic leaders
praised his work as "one of the powers that brought about the
revolution."
PLEASE NOTE: Many
of the articles and cartoons on this site contain racially insensitive
images and text. |
