An original print circa 1865 celebrating the emancipation of slaves at the end of the American Civil War.
An original print circa 1865 celebrating the emancipation of slaves at the end of the American Civil War and suggesting an optimistic future for freed blacks. The central scene shows the inside of a freed man’s home with the happy family gathered around a stove and a picture of Abraham Lincoln and a banjo hanging on the wall. Beneath the scene is an image of Lincoln and above the scene is Thomas Crawford’s statue of “Freedom”. To the left of the apparition of Freedom is a hag holding the three-headed hellhound Cerberus. Also to the left are images of the past – fugitive slaves being hunted in a swamp (top), a black man being sold away from his family at public auction, a black woman being flogged and a male slave being branded. On the right of the print are contrasting scenes of the future that awaits – a triumphant woman with an olive branch and the scales of justice, a freed man’s cottage in peaceful countryside, a black mother sending her children off to “public school”, a free man receiving pay from a cashier. The two small scenes either side of Lincoln’s portrait show a mounted overseer flogging a field slave (left) and a foreman politely greeting black cotton field workers (right). The print is an engraving by King & Baird based on a work by artist Thomas Nast.
Size: 6936px × 5123px
Photo credit: © Archive Images / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: &, 1865, 19th, abraham, african, america, american, americans, art, artist, artwork, attitude, attitudes, baird, banjo, black, blacks, brand, branding, brands, century, cerberus, change, changing, civil, colour, coloured, concept, concepts, conceptual, cruel, cruelty, cultural, culture, dog, dogs, drawing, drawings, emancipation, ethnic, ethnicity, flog, flogged, flogging, free, freed, freedom, graphic, graphics, hell, hellhound, heritage, historic, historical, history, hound, hounds, king, lincoln, man, men, myth, mythology, nast, negro, negroes, nineteenth, optimism, optimistic, poster, posters, prejudice, prejudices, president, print, prints, proclamation, race, racial, racism, racist, racists, sketch, sketches, slave, slavery, slaves, social, society, states, thomas, united, usa, war, whip, whipping, whips, white, whites, woman, women
