The New Orleans Convention or Massacre — Which Is the More Illegal?

A skeletal Death, shrouded in gauze, looms over a field of corpses and gestures accusingly toward the viewer above the caption "To Union Men." The New Orleans Massacre of July 1866 — in which white police and Confederate veterans slaughtered Black and Unionist delegates attempting to reconvene Louisiana's constitutional convention — supplies the carnage at center. Two smaller panels below frame Nast's legal challenge: at left, a peaceful "Convention" hall bearing banners for Suffrage, Civil Rights, and the Freedmen's Bureau; at right, armed men beating and shooting figures in a chaotic "Massacre." The caption demands — without irony — which act was truly illegal. Nast directly attacks President Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction veto politics, arguing that Black citizens' assembly was lawful while the mob violence that crushed it was the actual crime.