United States Sanitary Commission — "Our Heroines"

Nast arranges five scenes around a laurel wreath bearing the inscription "Our Heroines." The large central oval shows a woman in mourning dress reading to a bearded, bedridden soldier — intimate, domestic in feeling even within a ward setting. Four smaller medallions encircle her, labeled "On the Battle Field," "In the Hospital," "In the Parlor," and "At the Fair" — mapping the full geography of women's Civil War labor, from field nursing to fundraising Sanitary Fairs. The overarching header reads United States Sanitary Commission. Nast's argument is straightforwardly honorific: Northern women sustaining the Union war effort deserve formal, public commemoration.