Come One Come All, Free and Equal

Published the week after the Fifteenth Amendment's ratification moved through Congress, Nast's dinner-table allegory crowds a single frame with figures representing the nation's new constitutional promise. Around a laden Thanksgiving table sit a Black man, a Chinese man in embroidered robes, a woman, a turbaned figure, Irish and German immigrants, and others—diverse enough to strain credulity as literal portraiture. The centerpiece reads "Universal Suffrage." Portraits of Washington, Lincoln, and Grant line the walls; a sign reads "Welcome" above a view of Castle Garden, New York's immigrant entry point. Corner legends announce "Come One Come All" and "Free and Equal." The Chinese and Irish figures carry the broad ethnic caricature standard to illustrated weeklies of the era—exaggerated features meant as shorthand recognition, not sympathy. Nast's argument is genuinely radical for 1869: the republic's table has room for all, and the ballot should follow.