A Christmas dinner. A scene on the outer picket line – Vintage Print
![A Christmas dinner. A scene on the outer picket line, [ca. 1876] — historic drawing](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/bc/bceb2e5ec1d0-L.webp)
(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)
Description
A window into the past: A Christmas dinner. A scene on the outer picket line, preserved in this historic drawing. An authentic image from the Library of Congress, it carries the weight of the real historical record.
Choose the framed print, ready to hang the day it arrives, or the unframed print for a frame of your own. A fine choice for anyone who loves history, and a gift that gets noticed. Free shipping in the lower 48 states. Snapshots of the Past has been bringing history to the wall since 2001, for tens of thousands of customers worldwide.
A Christmas dinner. A scene on the outer picket line
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Set on the outer picket line, where sentries stood watch beyond the main camp, this drawing shows a Christmas meal taken not around a table but in the open, among men who could not leave their posts. It comes from *Life Studies of the Great Army*, a series of images that Edwin Forbes drew from his Civil War sketches and published in 1876, about a decade after the fighting ended. Holidays on picket duty were often meager, with soldiers relying on rations, packages from home, or whatever they could scrounge, and the scene preserves the everyday texture of Union army life that the series aimed to record.
| Created / published | [ca. 1876] |
|---|---|
| Medium | 1 drawing. |
| Genre | 1919 (DLC/PP-1919:R1.1.303) Forms part of: Civil War drawing collection." |
| Notes | Part of Life studies of the great army." Gift |
| Subjects | Christmas--1870-1880. Eating & drinking--1870-1880. Military life--1870-1880. |
| Source | Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division |
| Original scan | 1,536 × 1,096 px · prints to 5 × 4 in at 300 dpi |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-HPA-112509 |
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![The Union Christmas Dinner [political cartoon of plea for peace, showing Pres. Lincoln inviting Confederate states to join Northern states at peace table]](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/b2/b26dca122b2a-400.webp)
