Sketch of the Old Barn

This engraving, which serves as the frontispiece for the 1851 edition of John Pendleton Kennedy's Swallow Barn, or A Sojourn in the Old Dominion, depicts a bucolic fictional plantation scene. Several well-dressed white men appear to be listening respectfully as an enslaved black man speaks; meanwhile, enslaved children chase after farm animals. The main plantation house stands at a distance.