Abraham Lincoln and the Drummer-Boy

Nast waited two years to draw his last picture of Lincoln as a real person, timing it for the second anniversary of his death. On its cover page, the Weekly quoted an incident taken from Six Months at the White House, a book of reminiscences about the President which had been published in 1886 by Francis Bicknell Carpenter.

Nast enjoyed drawing children as exemplified in his 1863 cartoon of the Drummer Boy of Our Regiment. Now he illustrated Abraham Lincoln and the Drummer Boy as he would have done for a book. This is one of the few Harper’s Weekly book-type illustrations that Nast drew, although he illustrated at least 110 books over the years for their authors or publishers.