Amphitheatrum Johnsonianum

Nast's title—Amphitheatrum Johnsonianum—casts President Andrew Johnson as a Roman emperor presiding over a gladiatorial arena. The central figure in imperial laurel wreath (labeled ANDY, echoed on banners) extends a thumb toward a chained gladiator in scale armor—a figure representing Reconstruction and Union victory—while a pedestal inscribed RECO[NSTRUCTION] sits beneath them. A banner reading MEMPHIS invokes the 1866 massacre in which white mobs, aided by city police (the shield POLIC[E] appears prominently), killed dozens of Black residents; a scroll at right likely lists additional atrocities. Attendant figures—Confederate sympathizers and Johnson's political allies—watch approvingly. The Roman allegory frames Johnson's vetoes of Reconstruction legislation as a tyrant's sport, with Black citizens as the sacrificial victims.