Harper’s Weekly – December 27, 1879

Anticipating the 1880 Presidential campaign, longtime aristocratic Delaware Senator Thomas Bayard assumed that he was the 1876 loser Samuel Tilden’s residual heir. Bayard was a strong believer in states’ rights, which enhanced his appeal to the South. He claimed that he could conciliate both sectors, a proposition which Nast attacked without mercy, mostly in words.

However, Nast respected Bayard’s advocacy of hard money and financial soundness. In late 1879, he depicted Bayard preventing the Democratic Donkey from falling into financial chaos; meanwhile, Treasury Secretary John Sherman, holding inflationary 83-cent silver certificates, watched the Republican Elephant slumber on the edge of the same precipice as it “let well enough alone.” This was the first joint appearance of the two permanent party symbols in a Nast cartoon.