"Thank God for Maryland Freeing Her Slaves" — from *Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 1864*

One vignette in Nast's multi-panel Thanksgiving spread, this circular plate shows a white woman in a flowing dress extending her hand to a Black woman who kneels before her, a small child clinging nearby. Armed white guards loom at left; a chained or shackled figure sits at right. The caption below the circle reads: Thank God for Maryland freeing her slaves. Maryland's new constitution, which abolished slavery on November 1, 1864, was the immediate occasion. Nast frames emancipation as a gift bestowed from above — the white figure luminous and erect, the Black figures supplicant — reflecting the paternalist abolitionist visual grammar of the era rather than Black agency. The kneeling pose echoes Wedgwood's famous antislavery medallion, a convention Nast's readership would have recognized instantly as humanitarian sentiment, however condescending its hierarchy reads today.