The Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation

"Emancipation"

This is the artist Thomas Nast's celebration of emancipation at the end of the Civil War. The central scene shows the interior of a freedman's home with the family gathered around a "Union" wood stove. On either side of the central picture are scenes contrasting black life in the South under the Confederacy (left) with visions of the freedman's life after the war (right). A small portrait of Abraham Lincoln sits at the bottom of the illustration.

Date: 1865

Original Format: Fine Print Illustration