If the Civil War was the most turbulent period in U.S. history, the Reconstruction era, spanning the years 1865 to 1877, might deserve consideration as a close second. After the war, attention turned to stitching the torn country back together, extending civil rights to African Americans, particularly newly freed slaves, and ending the lingering bitterness between North and South. This engraving, produced soon after the guns of war fell silent, presents a highly idealized hope for the future of Reconstruction, when many Americans entertained the belief that the nation could bind up its wounds.