Arms of Washington and Pedigree of Washington 1858 framed flask patent their portraits ringed in the

their portraits ringed in the fraternal regalia of the GAR — a veterans' lithograph that reads less like a roster than a civic liturgy

almost certainly

the lithographer's careful shading lending dignity to a coalition already fracturing over slavery's westward creep

and Fourth Street greeting cards bright with the bustle of a bourbon town

A fraternal emblem from the nativist workingmen's lodges that flourished in the shadow of antebellum immigration debates — compass

Arms of Washington and Pedigree of Washington 1858 framed flask patent their portraits ringed in theArms of Washington and Pedigree of Washington 1858 a heraldic engraving tracing the General's ancestral line back through English gentry, published at a moment when a fracturing republic clung to its founder's bloodline as proof of inheritance, of continuity, of a Union worth its mythology. About the Source Bella Frye sources artifacts from the great American historical archive the Library of Congress, the National Archives, regional historical