Civil War History in Three Paintings

In 1866, artist Thomas Waterman Wood painted three canvasses forming a narrative triptych entitled “A Bit of War History.” 

In this series of paintings, Wood portrays the journey of a Black soldier. In "The Contraband," the self-emancipated man appears in a U.S. Army Provost Marshall General office, eager to enlist. "The Recruit" represents him as proudly ready for military service. In "The Veteran," he is depicted as an amputee possibly seeking his pension in the same office where he first enlisted, or returning to military service.

By the war’s end, Black men made up more than ten percent of the United States Army and Navy, fighting bravely in so-called U.S. Colored Troops.

Wood, a White Vermont-born painter, produced this empathetic work in New York at a time when caricatured representations of Blacks were the norm. 

The series is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in The American Wing, Gallery 762. 

Pictures and text from the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, Maryland