Click on the stars to learn about the image below. Question to consider: How can political cartoon communicate current events?

The artist illustrates Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, disrespectfully stepping on the grave of a “Union Hero” and breaking the sword of “Northern Power.” 

Image Caption: Anthony, Edward, Contributor, and Mathew B Brady. President Jefferson Davis, Confederate States of America. United States of America Mississippi, 1861. [New York: Edward Anthony, to 1876] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2021669722/.

This illustration appeared in Harper’s Weekly on September 3, 1864, just before the upcoming Presidential election, when the country was “clamoring for peace at any price” and Northern Democrats called for an immediate end to the War. For Nast this position amounted to surrender to the Confederacy.

Nast expresses this visually by placing the Union soldiers’ ultimate sacrifice against the epitaph, “In Memory of the Union Heroes who fell in a Useless War.” 

Nast depicts the grieving figure of Columbia, symbolizing the moral conscience of the United States, kneeling and mourning the lost Union Heroes and the Stars and Stripes flying upside down in the left corner, signaling distress.

How is this image of Columbia different than those in Activity 2?

Considered to be one of Nast’s most powerful and famous Civil War images, this illustration was printed on one million Republican presidential campaign flyers. President Abraham Lincoln’s re-election managers added “The Rebel Terms of Peace!!” to the original engraving. They titled the poster “A Traitor’s Peace That the Northern Copperhead Leaders Would Force Upon the Country.”

President Abraham Lincoln was re-elected and, not yet 24-years-old, Nast’s national reputation was established.

Standards for Thomas Nast Illustrates Current Events