On this day in 1864, the above Thomas Nast cartoon (larger version here), my favorite of his many excellent works, ran in Harper’s Weekly. Nast drew this image in the wake of the Democratic Party’s national convention, which took place in Chicago from August 29-31, 1864. At the convention, with Sherman bogged down outside Atlanta and Grant’s incremental progress toward Richmond measured in gallons of blood, the Democrats’ Copperhead wing, led by Clement Vallandigham and Fernando Wood, managed to nail a peace plank into the party platform.

Nast penned his cartoon as a response to that fateful decision. A Union soldier, his body mangled through patriotic sacrifice, hides his head in shame as he shakes hands with Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Davis’s boot sits atop the fresh grave of an unknown Yankee killed “in a useless war”. Columbia, meanwhile, kneels beneath the two men, watering the fresh grave with her tears. The cartoon’s title is, “Compromise with the South”. (Again, you can click on the link above for more details, because I’ve only just scratched the surface in this summary.)

The cartoon is extraordinary not only because of its power but also because of what it tells us about media and the spread of information at the time. Two days before this image appeared in Harper’s, on September 1, 1864, John Bell Hood’s troops had retreated from Atlanta, leaving the city for Sherman to occupy. That news, which Nast wouldn’t yet have received as he worked on his cartoon, buoyed the Union. The Democratic Party, which had capitulated to its peace wing only days before, looked disloyal. And Abe Lincoln, whose loss in the ‘64 election had seemed a foregone conclusion in August, trounced George McClellan in November.