Elephants are playing important roles in the country’s civil war, but the conflict casts a dark shadow over their future.

The Silver Elephant dinner often attracts presidential hopefuls looking to test their message in front of Republican Party ...

In the military, we call that soft power—influence earned through credibility and values. It's what builds coalitions abroad, ...

Why is the Demoratic Symbol a donkey and the Republican Symbol an elephant? What is the history of the political party symbols? What is the story behind the animal mascots of our major parties ...

The Donkey of Democracy antedates the Republican Elephant by more than four years. It was in the issue of Harper's Weekly for Jan. 15, 1870, that the long-eared animal dropped off the tip of Nast ...

The elephants which cartoonists have been using as a symbol for the Republican Party since 1874 are a satisfactory metaphor.*The G. O. P. is old (84), massive, retentive and, though powerful ...

According to the United States national archives, the elephant became a recognizable symbol for the Republican Party in the late 19th century after the cartoonist Thomas Nast popularized the image ...

But it was Nast’s revival of the Democratic donkey in his Jan. 18, 1870 cartoon, shown above — “A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion” — that popularized the symbol.

Thomas Nast, the German-born editorial cartoonist for Harper’s Weekly magazine, came up with both of them — he introduced the donkey first, on Jan. 19, 1870: 155 years ago Sunday.