http://www2.truman.edu/parker/research/cartoons.html
Go to Edit -> Find -> Mormon, and a cartoon entitled “Religious Freedom Is Not Guaranteed” by Thomas Nast featuring two reptiles crawling over the U.S. Senate Dome should appear. I think the irony pointed out by the excerpt below it in the fact that Mormonism is a distinctly American strain of religious, and therefore really cannot rationally be considered “foreign” in any real way, is important here, as it both connects the Mormons to their Protestant opposition (Protestants came to and founded America because they broke off from their church, and Mormons did the same thing) and separates them from it by depicting them as something less than human, a monster. I can’t help but wonder, though- this cartoon makes it seem as though Mormons (and the Roman Catholic church) wanted to dominate / control the country. Isn’t it more truthful to assert that they just wanted to take advantage of the right to practice their beliefs freely & without interference? Where does one population ever try to “crawl” all over the other?