I love this little detail from Thomas Nast's 1880 political cartoon for Harper's Weekly and several years ago I made it my icon for early November. An old-fashioned Ballot Box, from the days of real, countable, verifiable paper ballots, stands on a pedestal incised with the words "Liberty - No Man - No Party - No Country Can Destroy It". The Ballot Box is crowned with a liberty cap (which Nast converted from the (red) bonnet rouge icon of the French Revolution to a "Stars-and-Stripes" version) surrounded by the victor's laurels and adorned with a star-shaped "US" badge.

Years ago I borrowed this image from a copy of the cartoon we had in our collection at work, and put it on that year's ballot form for elections in my professional association, changing it slightly by adding the initials of that association to the cap just over the star. And when I wanted to make this icon, I couldn't locate the original cartoon, so I took a copy of the old association ballot, whited out the group's name and inked the stripes back in the positions I remembered they should have, and scanned it for my LJ icon. But you can't really appreciate it at 100 pixels by 100 pixels, and courtesy of my friend Google I found the following full version, along with many cool images related to paper ballots, at a webpage from the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History:

http://americanhistory.si.edu/vote/paperballots.html



Eek! On the full cartoon, you can see that Nast's original caption read "The Coming Crown." A Republican victory, and an everlasting Republican form of government. Presumably back in 1880, Nast was calling for a GOP victory for that year, but not for a Rovian "permanent Republican majority", rather for an everlasting version of that form of government to which Benjamin Franklin referred in his famous words, "A republic, ma'am, if you can keep it".

LIBERTY - NO MAN - NO PARTY - NO COUNTRY CAN DESTROY IT

May it be so, please God. May it be so.

VOTE!!!