, "I didn't get into the profession because of Thomas Nast, but the profession is here because of Thomas Nast."

In 1868 Nast started his cartoon campaign against Boss Tweed and his corrupt Tammany Hall political machine, which had been bilking New York City of tens of millions of dollars since 1865.The first salvo was "A Respectable Screen Covers a Multitude of Thieves," a small cartoon that appeared on the back page of the October 10 Harper's Weekly. It showed New York Mayor John T. Hoffman with a self-satisfied look on his face, standing in front of a screen. Behind the screen, a group of men grab fistfuls of money from a box Nast labeled "City Treasury." A sign hanging over their heads reads, "Thou shall steal as much as thou canst. The Ring."

When Ulysses S. Grant was asked to name the one American civilian who had the most impact on the course ofthe Civil War, he replied: "I think, Thomas Nast. He did as much as any one to preservé the Union and bring the war to an end."

Nast's work "conveyed both the pathos and the meaning ofthe war to a large middle-class Northern audience and struck a chord with them that words - other than those of Abraham Lincoln - were not better able to do," said Morton Keller, author of TTie Art and Politics of Thomas Nast.