"Peace — Good Will Towards Men," Harper's Weekly, July 8, 1865

Drawn in the immediate afterglow of Union victory, this composite plate organizes the theme of postwar reconciliation across five vignettes framed by a rustic-twig border. The large central panel shows a farmer steadying a draft horse while a boy crouches to repair harness or plow gear — civilian labor resuming. The middle-right panel depicts two men in an embrace, surrounded by women in period dress, likely a soldier's homecoming. The upper-right circle shows a harbor crowded with steamships and spectators; the lower circles suggest domestic reunion and harbor commerce. The banner caption reads PEACE — Good Will Towards Men, echoing Luke 2:14. Nast's composition conspicuously erases the freedpeople whose liberation the war secured — a telling omission that reflects Harper's uneasy editorial balancing act between abolitionist principle and white Northern audience comfort in the summer of 1865.