*On this date in 1866, this sketch, “Celebration of the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia by the colored people in Washington D.C.,” was created.
The artist, Frederick Dielman. served as a topographer and draughtsman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Fortress Monroe and Baltimore from 1866 to 1872. It was published in Harper's Weekly on May 12, 1866. It portrays American history as a conflict between two opposing trees struggling to dominate the land.
One was the tree of slavery, planted at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619; the other, planted by the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1620, was the tree of liberty. The allegory associates the Republican Party with the liberty tree.
