By David J. Kent
Washington, D.C,
Monday, March 3, 2025
Abraham Lincoln was desperate to find a way to peace in the Civil War. In 1868, George P.A. Healy brought this struggle to life in a painting he called The Peacemakers. Lincoln is depicted with his top military commanders debating how to end the Civil War and what the peace that follows would look like. The painting, resident in the White House art collection since 1947, depicts a scene taking place on the Union steamer River Queen on March 27, 1865.
Joining Lincoln are Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, and Rear Admiral David D. Porter. Lincoln is shown sitting in the middle of the men, leaning forward, elbow on knee and chin in hand, intensely listening as Sherman makes some point. According to the White House Historical Association:
"The figures in The Peacemakers seem strangely isolated. Meaning is embodied in their persons rather than their actions. Here, the separateness of each man is reinforced by the paneling and windows behind him. All heads are on the vertical, save Lincoln's. His inturned pose and brooding expression serve to differentiate him further. Behind him glows a rainbow, emblematic of the approaching peace."
Two weeks later, Confederate General Robet E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox.
The painting has become iconic of the difficulty in ending the war and starting the peace. What most do not know is that the large life-size version of the painting was destroyed in 1893 during a fire in the Calumet Club in Chicago. But the White House painting is not a copy; while smaller, it was also painted by Healy. It sat unnoticed for fifty years in a family storeroom in Chicago before being rediscovered in 1922. The Harry S. Truman White House purchased the painting in 1947, two years after the ending of World War II.
A copy of The Peacemakers can be seen in the Wyndham Hotel in Gettysburg, where many Lincoln Group of DC members stay for the annual Lincoln Forum in November. The fraught discussions of war and peace are also the subject of a new book by Michael Vorenberg called Lincoln's Peace. I'll have the honor of moderating Vorenberg's discussion of his book during a White House Historical Association History Happy Hour event on Zoom the evening of March 13, 2025. You can register for that online event here.
The original painting hung for many years in the White House Treaty Room. President Obama moved it to the Oval Office dining room. There is also a copy at the Pentagon.
Photo credit: The White House Historical Association (White House Collection)
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