"Peace — Good Will Towards Men," Harper's Weekly, 1865

Published in the year the Civil War ended, this full-plate illustration frames a central scene of a bearded man — a returning Union veteran, judging by his bearing — escorting a woman and children through a rural landscape, a rifle or musket still in the party's hands but carried loosely, at rest. Flanking vignettes in ruled borders narrate the larger story: soldiers mustering in the field (top left), a jubilant homecoming with a man lifting a child while a dog leaps at his feet (middle left), and a domestic interior reunion (bottom left). A riverfront industrial scene anchors the bottom right, suggesting the peacetime economy resuming. The partial caption reads Peace… On Earth and Good Will…, completing the biblical phrase. Nast organized the plate as sequential episodes — war, return, home, commerce — arguing that Union victory delivered not merely armistice but the conditions for ordinary family life and national prosperity.