Civil War Victory
This 1865 Thomas Nast
illustration celebrates the end of the Civil War and the Union victory.
The print features a number of patriotic images. In the upper center
is a portrait of Ulysses S. Grant, and he is surrounded by a victory wreath.
The image is captioned, "Our Conquering Hero". To the left is an image
of Rebel soldiers laying down their weapons, and to the right is an image of
victory celebrations in the streets of a Northern city.
The image has wreathes for
both the Army and the Navy. The center image features a bust of the
recently assassinated Abraham Lincoln. The Lincoln bust is being
attended to by Lady Liberty and Columbia. Also, this image features a
black man, raising up from broken shackles, symbolic of the freedom afforded
him by the completion of our Nation's most bloody war. |
Thomas Nast Civil War Victory Picture
(Click on Image for Enlarged View) |
This image is surrounded
by the names of the major Civil War battles, including: Gettysburg,
Cold
Harbor, Shiloh, Wilderness, Vicksburg, Richmond, Stone River, South
Mountain, Savannah, Atlanta, Corinth, Pea Ridge, Somerset, Port Royal,
Charleston, Malvern Hill, White Oak Road, Five Forks, Fair Oaks,
Chancellorsville, Chickahominy, Culpepper, Antietam, Cedar Creek,
Ringgold, Rappahannock, Gaines's mills, Savage Station, Spotsylvania Court
House, Falling Water, White Oak Swamp, Baton Rouge, Pettersburg, Sumter,
Knoxville, New Orleans, Wilmington, Newborn, Fredericksburg, Nashville,
Mobile, and Fort Henry.
The upper portion of the
image includes the inscription, "The Only National Debt That We Never Can
Pay is the Debt We Owe to the Victorious Union Soldiers and Sailors." The
lower portion of the image includes the words, "Victory Dearly Won", and
shows many dead soldiers laying in a trench. The illustration also has
an inset image in the lower left entitled, "Homeward March", showing
soldiers on their way home, and on the lower right an image of sailors
sailing for home.
This is a classic Thomas
Nast Civil War Patriotic illustration.
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