Originally posted by RAIDER14
And why is there symbol a
Just for historical reference, Andrew Jackson was called a "jack-ss" by his opponents during his 1828 presidential campaign.
No one knows whether "Old Hickory" took offense to the name-calling, but he turned the insult against his enemies, by using a donkey on his campaign posters, and went on to become the seventh president. The donkey went on to become the symbol of the Democratic party.
After Jackson's return to private life, the donkey fell into disuse as a political symbol, but was revived in 1870 by political cartoonist Thomas Nast, who is also credited with popularizing the Republican elephant.
Nast used a donkey in an 1870 Harper's Weekly cartoon to represent an anti-war faction with whom he disagreed, but later began using it to represent Democratic editors and newspapers. Its use as a Democratic symbol soon followed.
Just a small parallel to the
Oregon Suicide thread, Jackson, a democrat and champion of the little guy, was responsible for the trail of tears, the banishment of Indians from east of the Mississippi and the force marching the Cherokee from the Appalachians to the Oklahoma territory.
