After the Battle — The Rebels in Possession of the Field

One of Nast's earliest Civil War illustrations for Harper's Weekly, this two-page wood engraving spreads across facing pages (numbered 680–681) to panoramic effect. The left panel shows a debris-strewn hillside littered with Union dead and wounded; Confederate cavalry officers survey the carnage from horseback above. The right panel shifts to the wider field: Confederate soldiers plunder fallen men, overturn supply wagons, and move freely through what was a Union position, with a burning landscape and distant encampment behind them. The caption — After the Battle — The Rebels in Possession of the Field — frames Confederate victory as brutal occupation rather than military triumph, a deliberate editorial choice aimed at hardening Northern resolve. Nast depicts no heroism on the Southern side, only looting and indifference to suffering, consistent with Republican war-press messaging in the grim middle period before emancipation reframed Union war aims.