Victory and Death

Published weeks after Lincoln's assassination, this Nast plate arranges three arch-shaped vignettes beneath a central allegory. At top, an armored warrior kneels in defeat before a staircase, sword fallen. The central panel, labeled Europe and America, shows two crowned female figures—personifications of continents—mourning over a draped coffin bearing the name LINCOLN. Left arch, labeled Victory, depicts a crowded city street hung with Union banners proclaiming surrender and peace. Right arch, labeled Death, shows troops massed before a building whose banner reads Malice Toward None / Charity for All—Lincoln's own second-inaugural words repurposed as epitaph. The headline verse, signed Marve, reads: Death levels all things in his march / Nought can resist his mighty strength / The palace proud—triumphal arch / Shall mete their shadows length. Nast frames national triumph and grief as simultaneous, inseparable events: the Union won its war the moment it lost the man who defined its mercy.