The murders of 10 members of the staff of Charlie Hebdo, a Paris-based satirical weekly publication, as well as three police officers, caused sadness and anger across the world.

The terrorists who carried out this cowardly attack felt the need to use high-powered weapons to respond to pens and pencils. That seems like a tremendous over-reaction.

But political cartoons have long caused fear and outrage. The pen is mightier than the sword, it has long been said, and the cartoon often is far more powerful than the story.

Over three decades of editing newspapers, I always made sure to have access to good cartoons for the opinion page. My great friend Andy Jacobs was the cartoonist for The Rapid City Weekly News from 2005-09.

Andy did tremendous work that was instantly appreciated by our readers. I doubt the targets of some of his work felt that way all the time, although some had cartoons that captured their images framed and hung in places of honor.

Others doubtlessly ended up wadded into balls and tossed in the trash. Too late — they had made their point to thousands of readers. Andy was, and is, very good.

Cartoons are effective because they are visually powerful and deliver an instant message of either humor or outrage. The best can do both at the same time.

Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons were bold, provocative and often pushed the boundaries of taste. That is the job of a cartoonist. The fact that the artists paid in blood for what they did in ink is truly appalling.

Thomas Nast, one of the most revered and respected cartoonists and illustrators of all time, knew how much strength there was in the slender instruments he gripped between his fingers.

I first learned of Nast by reading “The Tiger’s Tail: A Story of America’s Great Political Cartoonist Thomas Nast,” a 1964 book written for younger readers by Nancy Veglahn.

When I enrolled at South Dakota State University in the fall of 1976, I was amazed to learn Veglahn was teaching classes there. I took two that she taught; she was an excellent instructor as well as a talented writer.

I am forever indebted to her for the grades I was given — she was very encouraging and helpful — as well as for the fact that she introduced me to Nast.

He became famous for targeting William “Boss” Tweed, the corrupt leader of the Tammany Hall political machine in New York City in the 1860s and ’70s. Tweed wasn’t too concerned about what The New York Times and other newspapers wrote about his schemes.

But he feared the cartoons of Nast, a German immigrant who wielded a powerful pen for Harper’s Weekly.

Nast, who also is credited with inventing and/or popularizing the now-familiar images of rotund, cheery Santa Claus, the Republican Party’s elephant, the Democratic donkey and the lean, bearded Uncle Sam, made Tweed and his cronies a regular feature in Harper’s Weekly.

He did so by drawing highly detailed, bitingly funny cartoons with the faces of Tweed and his henchmen in a variety of settings. They were extremely popular and equally powerful.

Tweed felt the lash of Nash’s pen and offered him huge bribes to stop. He refused, and pressure built on the Tammany Ring.

“I don’t care a straw for your newspaper articles; my constituents don’t know how to read, but they can’t help seeing them damned pictures!” Tweed is quoted as having said.

The Boss was forced from power and he fled to Spain. He was arrested and returned to New York, where he died in jail. In a fitting and final note, the Spanish police used a Nast cartoon to help identify the fugitive.

For more on Nast and his campaign against Tweed, and to see some of his drawings, go to mcnyblog.org/2013/09/24/thomas-nast-takes-down-tammany-a-cartoonists-crusade-against-a-political-boss.