This contradiction between Manet’s professed politics and those present on canvas, this tension between word and image, is evident in the first of Manet’s Civil War depictions, the 1864 watercolor study The Kearsarge at Boulogne (Wilson-Bareau, 56). Here the boat is distanced, literally and figuratively, from the other elements in the scene, implying an opposition toward the anti-Imperialist Union forces and a diversion from his stated politics. To this end, the Metropolitan Museum’s exhibition catalogue Manet notes the “small craft in the foreground” (Manet, 224), but fails to note that the craft, placed at a distance from the Kearsarge on the right side of the painting, retains a belligerent disposition. The ambiguous composition of this craft emphasizes its aggression: there exists a pointed barb, aimed at the Kearsarge, that may have been a mast in reality. In the painting, however, this mast becomes a phallic object of offense, one that presents this small boat in battle with the American warship. The Kearsarge remains passive and idle in the distance, while the small boat in the foreground appears immediate, offensive, and menacing. The sailboat to the immediate right of the Kearsarge further participates with this small craft in this battle as it attempts to sail right into American boat. The sailboat does not maintain a parallel path with the American Kearsarge, but rather chooses a path of convergence and confrontation as it sails in the distance toward the American warship. Manet utilizes this sailboat and the small craft in the foreground to undermine the anti-imperialist Kearsarge and, therefore, to contradict his stated anti-imperialist politics. The close proximity, furthermore, of the Kearsarge in the distant horizon relative to the setting sun in the upper left corner that Wilson-Bareau dismisses as “an accident…a drop of oil” (Wilson-Bareau, 59) allows the sun to play its part along with the sailboat in this silent battle. Importantly, the distanced positioning of the Union warship in the painting near the horizon allows this sun to set right on the Kearsarge itself, right on the prospect of eliminating the injustice of Louis Napoleon’s regime – a regime that allowed a prince, commissioned by the Emperor himself, to be abandoned and murdered by Mexican insurgents three years later. Yet in this watercolor Manet does not oppose this insensibility, this negligence, but rather affirms Louis Napoleon’s imperialist ambitions in emasculating the anti-imperialist Kearsarge. Thus, while Manet’s letters to his confidants may have displayed the injustice of Napoleon’s politics, his watercolor suggests through the unfavorable, distanced depiction of the Kearsarge that the emperor was justified in his imperialist goals.