Reconstruction

Thomas Nast (1840-1902)
Union Soldiers in Andersonville
Prison/The Rebel Leader, Jeff Davis,
at Fortress Monroe.
Philadelphia: King & Baird, 1865
Wood engraving
Prints & Photographs Division
Copyright deposit, 1865 (43.8)

Thomas Nast was the most influential political cartoonist in nineteenth-century America. His editorial cartoons for Harper's Weekly, which he joined in 1862, helped inflame Union sentiment during the Civil War. Nast became one of the most visible and voluble critics of the inadequacies of post-war Reconstruction, which was initiated by Lincoln and carried out by his successor Andrew Johnson. This rampant divisiveness is made apparent when Nast sharply juxtaposes the degradation of Union prisoners at Andersonville with the comfort afforded fallen Confederate president Jefferson Davis during his confinement at Fort Monroe.