The painting, Old '76 and Young '48, by Richard Caton Woodville depicts a scene in a dining room. A young man, Young '48, presumably coming home from the Mexican-American War with a sling on his left arm is eagerly telling his stories. Almost everyone is intent on listening, except his grandfather, Old '76, who is also a war veteran and thus, finds his stories to be painful. He never imagined that America would turn to be an imperialist. The painting shows the hypocrisy of the United States with articles relating to freedom scattered around the room - the bust of George Washington and Trumbull's 1787 "Signing of the Declaration of Independence".