And Not This Man? (August 1865)

Three months after Appomattox, Nast frames the question of Black male suffrage as a moral debt the Republic owes its soldiers. A wounded Black veteran—depicted with the broad facial exaggeration common to illustrated press of the era, yet shown in uniform and carrying a crutch that signals battlefield sacrifice—stands beside Columbia, the allegorical figure of the nation. She rests a hand on his shoulder and gestures toward a ballot box on a draped platform. Stars-and-stripes bunting frames the arch above; stars border the step at their feet. The caption "Franchise. And Not This Man?" turns the image into a direct challenge to lawmakers then debating Reconstruction: a man who bled for the Union cannot logically be denied the vote his country withholds from him.