Thanksgiving, 1865: Peace, Liberty, and Plenty

Published weeks after the Civil War's first peacetime Thanksgiving, this composite plate gathers four scenes beneath Andrew Johnson's October 28, 1865 proclamation. Top: a family receives a soldier home outside a modest cottage, captioned "Peace Has Come." Left center: a multigenerational household bows in Thanksgiving prayer around a fireplace — a warm domestic interior rendered with careful chiaroscuro. Right center: an allegorical Liberty figure raises the American flag above a crowd of rejoicing figures, several rendered in the broad physiognomic shorthand common to mid-century illustrated press, flattening Black faces into stock types even in a scene of emancipationist celebration — a contradiction Nast's era rarely examined. Bottom: a busy harbor labeled "Plenty of Work" bristles with masts and smokestacks, promising postwar industrial renewal. Johnson's proclamation text anchors the lower left, grounding jubilee in official authority.