Andy's Trip

Andy's Trip is a multi-panel political cartoon by American artist Thomas Nast depicting the 1866 electioneering trip of U.S. president Andrew Johnson that came to be known as the Swing Around the Circle. Published as a double-page spread in the October 27, 1866 issue of Harper's Weekly, the image "delivered a blow" and served as a "visual indictment of Johnson's behavior during his swing around the circle, divided by two dozen panels, with Johnson at the center wearing a halo and smiling beneath the words, a takeoff from his New York speech: 'Who has suffered more for you and for this Union than Andrew Johnson?'" According to historian Fiona Halloran, "Hammering away, Nast insisted that it was Johnson who 'forgot' Union veterans and Union families."

Rhetoric professor Brett Warnke puts Andy's Trip in a class of memorably ruthless takedowns of American presidents, along with works like Hunter S. Thompson's obituary of Richard M. Nixon and H. L. Mencken's commentary on the speeches of Warren G. Harding. Per Warnke, Johnson's behavior on the Swing "astonished the country. This hack was the President? Lincoln's heir? The nation's healer? ...Johnson, a half-literate East Tennessee tailor who delivered the same speech that was printed in the papers before he arrived, met crowds longing for something more than a Pretender's rehearsed and pitifully inarticulate wind...Nast scratched away any illusions about Johnson, revealing him as the petty, tempestuous, nasty little puke he was, in cartoons like Andy's Trip, where he mocks Johnson's faux martyrdom." One editorial writer quoted by historian James Ford Rhodes described the tour as revealing Johnson as "the first of our chief magistrates who believed in the brutality of the people and gave to the White House the ill-savor of a corner-grocery."

Background


Over the course of the almost three week tour, Johnson had compared himself to Jesus and his enemies to Judas Iscariot more than once (for example, stating: "Yes...over 1800 years ago, there was a man who...descended from on high and finding that the whole world was condemned and sentenced under the law...put himself upon the cross and attested by his wounds and his blood, and there declared, instead of putting the world to death: 'I will die that man may live.' [Applause] Then if I have erred, it is in that") while "not once did he mention Lincoln" only referring to "his predecessor." At one point during his speech in Niagara Falls, according to the Weekly Journal of Fremont, Ohio, Johnson said "...friends of the country, friends that were personal to me, were anxious that I should be placed on the ticket, I was placed there; I accepted it; the race was run, the victory was obtained, and I was made Vice-President of the United States. Can't you see the gradation comes along regularly? And, then, by the Constitution of the country, I have been made President. I am glad of it." Reflecting on the "I am glad of it" and the reputations of the assassinated Abraham Lincoln—already known as the Martyr President —and his successor, Johnson, Fremont Weekly Journal editorialized, "Considering the circumstances under which Mr. Johnson came to be President of the United States, he could not have made use of a more unfortunate expression."

According to historian Gregg Phifer, Johnson's self-obsession on the tour ironically benefitted his political adversaries: "Radical politicians, preachers, and editors found the President a vulnerable target, more vulnerable than his policies. Johnson rose to the bait, complaining over and over again, as at St. Louis, 'I have been traduced, I have been slandered, I have been maligned...' Much of his speaking time was devoted to Radical charges of excessive pardons, tyrannical use of the veto, usurpation of the congressional prerogative in reconstruction, lack of United States citizenship, misuse of the federal patronage, and betrayal of the party that elected him. And the more time he spent in self defense, the less he could use for debate on Negro suffrage, the fourteenth amendment, economy, and other issues the Radicals would rather postpone until after the election."

Reception
The Appleton Post of Wisconsin wrote, "Any Republican who wants something to smile at will find it abundantly in Harpers' Weekly for October 27. The large cartoon of Andy's Trip fills two pages, and gives stuff for study, laughter and execration; and the little vignette on the last page, representing Uncle Sam giving Andy a dose of extract of constitutional amendment, together with Andy's wry face thereat, cant fail to provoke boisterous laughter by its grotesque truth-telling." The Atchison Free Press of Kansas went even further: "By all means get Harper's Weekly for the 27th inst. It can be had at the news rooms, and is a valuable number. The illustration of Andy's Trip is worth a year's subscription, alone."