Political Animals

By Mark Bryant | Published in History Today Volume: 59 Issue: 6 2009

Mark Bryant looks at the lampooning of two hugely unpopular measures imposed during the administrations of two of the United States’ most distinguished presidents.

While Britain was embroiled in the Napoleonic Wars, two significant political cartoons were published in the US during the presidencies of Thomas Jefferson and his successor, James Madison. They both commented on recently introduced civil legislation and in both cases the laws were rescinded shortly afterwards. By coincidence both also featured new symbolic political animals which led to the introduction of new words into the English language: they were, respectively, the Ograbme turtle (or terrapin) and, more famously, the Gerrymander.

This article is available to History Today online subscribers only. If you are a subscriber, please log in.

Please choose one of these options to access this article:

Purchase a online subscription and receive unlimited access to our archive for one week, one month or a year

Purchase a print and website subscription, giving you one year's access to all our content and 12 editions of History Today magazine.

If you are already a print subscriber, purchase the online archive upgrade for a year's worth of access at a reduced price

Call our Subscriptions department on +44 (0)20 3219 7813 for more information.

If you are logged in but still cannot access the article, please contact us

Tags: Napoleonic Era,USA,

If you enjoyed this article, you might like these:

This Month's Magazine

Subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter:

From The Current Issue

History Today App

From The Archive

Lords of the Northern Forest

The Hudson's Bay Company was one of the central forces moulding the development of the vast tracts of land that today are Canada - but as Barry Gough explains here, the circumstances of its launch in 1670 also reveal much about the commercial forces, personalities and rivalries of Restoration England.