On March 27, 1865, in a cabin on the Union steamer River Queen, President Abraham Lincoln met with Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Maj. Gen. William Sherman, and Rear Admiral David D. Porter at City Point, Virginia to discuss the nature of the peace terms to come as the American Civil War was winding down. Only Sherman and Porter left written accounts of what was said, and some historians have suggested that Porter exaggerated Lincoln's desire for peace, "on almost any terms" in order to justify Sherman's later, liberal surrender terms to Gen. Joseph Johnston. But Lincoln's generous terms were memorably formulated in his Second Inaugural Address, just three weeks before: "With malice toward none; with charity for all."
In 1868, George Peter Alexander Healy, one of the most popular and prolific portrait artists of the nineteenth century, completed “The Peacemakers,” which depicts this meeting 159 years ago today, as a tribute to President Lincoln. Healy actually made two copies of this painting. He gave the larger of the two to Ezra B. McCagg of Chicago, which survived that city's deadly fire of 1871 only after the painting was cut from the stretching on the back of the canvas, rolled up, and carried to safety—only to be destroyed 22 years later when the Calumet Club, where the painting was on long-term loan, burned down.
For decades, it was assumed that Healy's “The Peacemakers” was lost, until the smaller copy was rediscovered in 1922. That sole surviving copy is now part of the White House collection.