The Tearful Convention

Published in Harper's Weekly during the heated aftermath of the Civil War, this full-page Nast plate ridicules the National Union Convention of 1866, Andrew Johnson's attempt to build a cross-party coalition opposing Radical Reconstruction. The central medallion shows two men—labeled Massachusetts and South Carolina—walking arm in arm, mocking the convention's staged sectional reconciliation. Surrounding vignettes depict weeping politicians, forced embraces, and theatrical grief, all captioned with sardonic phrases: "Tears of Joy and Gratitude," "Patriotic Sentiment," "Unbroken Harmony." The crocodile imagery flanking the central circle—tears of a predator, not a penitent—drives Nast's core charge: that Southern delegates and their Northern allies performed remorse without accepting emancipation's consequences. The composition treats Johnson's coalition as cynical theater dressed as concord.