For all its flaws and virtues, yellow journalism exerted a powerful influence in American journalism at the turn of the twentieth century. Yellow journalism was much decried but its salient features often were emulated. The genre was appealing and distinctive in its typography, in its lavish use of illustrations, in its aggressive newsgathering techniques.

What actually caused the Maine to explode -- a Spanish mine or an accident in the ship's forward ammunition magazine -- is still a mystery. A Congressional investigation at the time was inconclusive, but that didn't stop the yellow reporting. The first story in Pulitzer's New York World carried a banner headline that left little doubt about who was responsible: ''Maine Explosion Caused by Bomb or Torpedo?'' The Journal published a diagram of what it called a secret ''infernal machine'' that struck the ship like a deadly torpedo -- apparently the figment of some journalist's imagination.

Many factors altered this plight by the close of thecentury. Possibly most significant is that journalistsbegan to flex their muscle by the 1890s. Referred to as“yellow journalism,” this style of writing derived fromdubious motives. Most notably, “yellow journalism”was magnified by the newspaper circulation battlebetween two publishers, William Randolph Hearstand Joseph Pulitzer. Graphic illustrations commis-sioned from some of the country’s most talentedartists and stories written by premiere authors andjournalists of the day exaggerated the plight of Cubansunder Spanish rule in the early 1890s and fanned theflames of war

The cartoon also has the specific aim of endorsing ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was intended to guarantee that federal voting rights could not be denied on the basis of race.

Nast's work "conveyed both the pathos and the meaning ofthe war to a large middle-class Northern audience and struck a chord with them that words - other than those of Abraham Lincoln - were not better able to do," said Morton Keller, author of TTie Art and Politics of Thomas Nast.

The impact of Nast's cartoons and the campaign by journalists at Harper's Weekly, and later the New York Times, led directly to a change of leadership at Tammany Hall and most of the Ring were eventually voted out of office. Tweed himself was sentenced to twelve years in prison, but was released after a year and then arrested again in an attempt to recover $6 million in stolen funds.