Five of America's most storied Presidents, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Ulysses S. Grant are drawn in pencil from photo-boothed images of the American currency on which they appear. Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan broke the mold in multiple categories.
Five of English literature's most influential authors, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, E. B. White and C. S. Lewis are drawn in ink, with several of their best quotes texturing their faces.
Interested in the philosophy behind science to varying degrees, Albert Einstein, Anselm of Canterbury, and Charles Darwin each impacted their world in remarkable ways. They are painted in watercolor on ink.
There hasn’t been a year since either of these men died that a new book hasn’t been published about Theodore Roosevelt or Winston Churchill.
William Henry Harrison gave the longest Inaugural Speech in U.S. Presidential history, caught pneumonia, and died after one month in office. Period. Next story, please. But there is more to my namesakes's story, and without it, the Republican party might never have been born.
The Jacksonian Democrats had taken a firm grip on the Presidency, first through Andrew Jackson, followed by his protege, the first President born into the United States of America after 1776. The Whig party, which described the affiliations of presidents Washington, Adams, Madison, and Monroe, was dying. 1840 was the Whig party's last chance to retake the office. William Henry Harrison, an American icon celebrated for his valor in the War of 1812 and the Indian Wars, strode towards the White House with a strong vision for governmental reform, including setting term limits on the Presidency and reforming the use of the Presidential Veto.
The Whigs were so proud and confident of their nominee that when it came to choosing a vice presidential nominee, their pick was an unknown and untested John Tyler. Unknown, at least, until it came time to tell the world that Old Tippecanoe was dead. As soon as Tyler was in charge, he turned his back on the Whigs and went his own way. Distrusted by both the Whigs and the Jacksonian Democrats, President Tyler was not able to do much, except ensure that the Whigs would fall apart, leaving the Democrats in charge when Election Day came back around. The next four presidents were Democrats, and due to their wishy-washy policies regarding slavery, many moderate Democrats broke away from their party and joined the scattered remains of the Whig party to form a new political party that would support abolition. That party was the Republican Party.
When told that the French peasants had no bread to eat, Marie Antoinette is rumored to have said, “Let them have cake!” In 1792, after 3 years of revolution, Marie was the first to die by the guillotine. The rebels had their cake that day, and ate it too.
These two cartoons celebrate the five hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.
