Compromise with the South — Dedicated to the Chicago Convention

Published weeks before the 1864 presidential election, this engraving attacks the Democratic Party's peace platform adopted at Chicago. The arch reads "Compromise with the South"; below it, a stooped Northern civilian—labeled NORTH—extends his hand to a defiant Confederate soldier labeled SOUTH, who plants a boot on a Union grave marker reading "In Memory of Union Heroes Who Fell in a Useless War." A grieving woman, likely Columbia or a war widow, kneels weeping at the stone. Behind the North, cities burn; behind the South, defeated Black figures crouch in the shadows—rendered in the period's reductive caricature, signaling that a negotiated peace would re-enslave them. Nast frames Democratic compromise not as reconciliation but as Northern capitulation and Confederate triumph, the soldiers' sacrifice erased by politicians.