A Distinguished Arrival. Negro soldier—"Hi dar! Show dis ole lady a room – one wid a closet to put dis yar skelle in tum in!"

New York, 1865. Carte-de-visite photograph, albumen print, 3.5” x 2.25” on paperboard mount, 4” x 2.375”. CONDITION: Very good, with scattered pinhead dark spots, light wear at extremities.

A carte-de-visite photograph of a caricature depicting Jefferson Davis’s arrival at Fort Monroe, Virginia for his 1865–67 imprisonment. As widely depicted at the time, Davis is dressed in women’s clothes, holding a bag with initials JD CSA. A smiling African American soldier and escort balances Davis’s skirt cage on his rifle, while the former Confederate president checks in to “Hotel de Monroe.” A noose hangs in front of the door to his “chamber.” Another black soldier appears in the background. The sun shines on the scene and an American flag waves overhead. The JD on Davis’s bag might just as well stand for “Just Deserts.”