Description from The Met: 'This work, painted at the close of the Civil War, forms a narrative triptych … of African American military service. In 'The Contraband' … the self-emancipated man appears in a U.S. Army Provost Marshall General office, eager to enlist.' He is raising his hat, and the U.S. flag is visible behind him.

"The Contraband"

'The Recruit' depicts the same man as a proud new soldier wearing union blue with a rifle slung over his shoulder.

"The Recruit"

In 'The Veteran,' the same man appears on crutches because he is missing his lower left leg. His clothes are civilian, but he's got a Union army cap on. He is saluting.

"The Veteran"

The word “contraband” referred to an enslaved person who had escaped. Given that the term usually indicated illegally imported or exported goods, its dehumanizing quality in the context of someone who has escaped bondage is palpable. Here, however, it stands in contrast to the painting, which shows a man, not a chattel or a caricature.1

The other two paintings see the same figure transformed into a soldier and a veteran. Both of these images underlined the figure’s manhood. With time, in fact, military service came to be associated with masculinity and citizenship in an age of people’s wars fought in North America and Europe.2

From this point of view, the paintings represent a message not only of self-emancipation through military service but of modern masculine citizenship shortly before the nineteenth amendment was ratified. In the West, this image of manhood and military service reached its high point in World Wars One and Two.

  1. Digital images via The Met, objects 84.12a, 84.12b, and 84.12c. ↩︎

  2. Mark Stoneman, “War, Gender, and Nation in 19th-Century Europe: A Preliminary Sketch,” blog, June 23, 2017. ↩︎