Although Nast was partisan, Republicans did not get off scot-free. The Republican elephant made its lumbering debut in an unflattering cartoon on November 7th 1874, in “The Third-Term Panic”.

German-born political cartoonist Thomas Nast gave America some of its most enduring symbols: the Republican elephant, the Democratic donkey, and Uncle Sam. Publishing regularly in Harper's Weekly ...

Origins: The elephant became associated with the Republican Party also thanks to Thomas Nast. In the same 1874 cartoon mentioned above, Nast depicted an elephant labeled "The Republican Vote ...

A donkey wearing a lion’s skin representing “Caesarism” frightens away an elephant labeled as the “Republican vote,” nearly falling into the trap of claims by Democratic-leaning Southern ...

Since 1860, those two parties have been the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. The Republican Party emerged in 1854 from the embers of the anti-slavery movement and the ashes of the Whigs.

Morey, of Rutland, held one that said, “We need to talk about the elephant in the womb,” with a drawing of the Republican elephant symbol inside a sketch of the female reproductive system.