Though this painting looks like an everyday scene, Eastman Johnson embedded within it an abolitionist message. Two men of different generations bide their time at a camp for processing maple sugar, an old fashioned process by this time. Importantly, maple sugar was a sweetener that, unlike cane sugar, did not rely on slave labor. Abolitionists urged consumers to boycott Southern goods such as cane sugar, empowering people to not only vote with their conscience, but with their wallets.