What the Colored Race Have to Be Thankful For

A Black minister—rendered by Nast without the grotesque caricature common to the era's illustrated press, his features dignified if idealized—gestures upward from a Gothic church pulpit adorned with flowers. The caption names two debts: Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, issued by his pen, and General Grant's enforcement of it by his sword. Published two decades after the Civil War, the plate is Nast's Thanksgiving meditation on Reconstruction's promise. The framing is grateful rather than militant, which itself carries politics: by 1886, Reconstruction had collapsed, federal enforcement of Black civil rights had ended, and the Republican Party Nast championed was retreating from its commitments. Giving thanks for past acts quietly indicts the present's abandonment of them.