Focus on this artwork and explore the Historical setting.
In March 1865, General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant invited President Lincoln to visit his headquarters at City Point, Virginia. By coincidence, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman (then campaigning in North Carolina) happened to visit City Point at the same time.  This allowed for the war's only three-way meeting of President Lincoln, General Grant, and General Sherman.  Also present was Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter, who wrote about the meeting in his journal, and later recounted:I shall never forget that council which met on board the River Queen. On the determinations adopted there depended peace, or a continuation of the war with its attendant horrors. That council has been illustrated in a fine painting by Mr. Healy, the artist, who, in casting about for the subject of an historical picture, hit upon this interview, which really was an occasion upon which depended whether or not the war would be continued a year longer. A single false step might have prolonged it indefinitely.
City Point, Virginia General-in-Chief President Lincoln William Tecumseh Sherman Rear Admiral Ulysses S. Grant Major General David Dixon Porter