For the 22nd USCT banner, Bowser depicted a black soldier pointing "a bayonet at the chest of a Confederate who has allowed his flag to fall and who is tossing aside his sword," beneath the words, "Sic semper tyrannis" ("thus always to tyrants"), a phrase which would come to have an entirely different meaning two years later when shouted by John Wilkes Booth after his assassination of Lincoln at Ford's Theater.