Historic Examples of Southern Chivalry — Dedicated to Jeff. Davis

Nast arranges nine vignettes around a central medallion portrait of a bearded Confederate officer — meant to embody the supposed gentlemanly code of the South — and labels the whole composition Southern Chivalry. The surrounding panels indict that claim: captions identify scenes of sick and wounded Union soldiers thrown into the road to die, a massacre of Black Americans at Murfreesboro Pike, bushwhackers firing from ambush, and a panel marked No Quarter showing close-quarters killing after surrender. Black figures are rendered in the broad caricature stock of 1860s illustration — exaggerated features used by Northern and Southern presses alike — though Nast deploys them as victims, not villains, to build an abolitionist indictment. The dedication to Confederate President Jefferson Davis is cutting sarcasm: this is what Southern honor actually looks like.