Republican Bottle Opener
- Hand stitched needlepoint
A great accessory for your kitchen or bar, and housing a handy magnet, this wood and needlepoint bottle opener will surely help get the party started.
Six years after the Republican Party was formed in 1854, Abraham Lincoln became its first member elected to the White House. The earliest connection of the elephant to the Republican Party was an illustration in an 1864 Lincoln presidential campaign newspaper, Father Abraham. It showed an elephant holding a banner and celebrating Union victories. During the Civil War, "seeing the elephant" was slang for engaging in combat, so the elephant was a logical choice to represent successful battles.The pachyderm didn’t start to take hold as a GOP symbol until Thomas Nast used it in an 1874 Harper’s Weekly cartoon. Nast employed the elephant to represent Republicans in additional cartoons during the 1870s, and by 1880 other cartoonists were using the creature to symbolize the party.