Meaning in Marble:

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Meaning in Marble Civil War Monuments and
American Identity An Online Professional
Development Seminar

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• GOALS
• To show how public monuments shaped the memory of
  the Civil War and how that memory changed over
  time
• To suggest ways to read Civil War monuments so
  that you can use them in your teaching

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• FROM THE FORUM
• Challenges, Issues, Questions
• How public monuments shaped the memory and
  meaning of the
• Civil War
• How Civil War monuments reflect values and
  issues
• How to read or interpret monuments

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McINTIRE DEPT. OF ART ART HISTORY STUDIO ART GRADUATE PROGRAM EVENTS
                                                
                                        Welcome
   About the Program    Admissions    Calendar
   Courses    Faculty Staff
Kirk Savage Professor of Art History University
of Pittsburgh Art of the United States Monument
Wars Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and
the Transformation of the Memorial
Landscape (2009) Standing Soldiers,
Kneeling Slaves Race, War, and Monument in
Nineteenth-Century America (1998) Awarded the
John Hope Franklin Prize

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• Questions for students
• Put your own body into the statues pose. What
  does it feel like? How does this help you
  understand what the figure is doing?
• What are some important details, or props (e.g.
  manacle, broken chain, tree stump, clothing) and
  what do they tell us about the implied narrative?
• How is the body represented?
• What is he looking at and why?
• Facial expression responses tend to be
  subjective. Focus on what you can see plainly
  mouth opened or closed, brow furrowed or not,
  etc.
• Using all these clues, can you piece together a
  narrative, a story line?
• What is the significance of this one mans story?
  Is it supposed to be representative of a larger
  national story or dilemma? How is it a parable
  (Howellss term)?

John Quincy Adams Ward, The Freedman, 1863.
Bronze statuette (20 tall).
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• Questions for students
• Monuments are assemblages of many elements
  inscriptions, symbols, sculptural figures, relief
  sculpture, architecture. Therefore, questions
  quickly multiply. Here are a few
• Where is it located and why?
• Who do you think would have the resources and the
  authority to erect such a monument?
• What is its overall scale? Which elements are
  meant to be seen close up and which from afar?
  Why?
• How do the sculptural elements (figures, reliefs)
  contribute to the monuments meaning or lesson?
  In this case, how does the combination of
  allegorical sculpture and realistic sculpture
  create meaning?
• How do the inscriptions contribute to its
  meaning? In what voice are these inscriptions
  speaking, and for whom? (For example, are the
  words quotations from actual people? Are there
  inscriptions in Latin? Etc.)
• Do the words and the images do different things?
  Focus on different topics or offer different
  messages? Why?

Martin Milmore, Soldiers Sailors
Monument, Boston Common, 1877
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James Batterson, Monument to Gen. William
Jenkins Worth, 1857, Madison Square, New
York. Worth was a celebrated officer in
the Mexican-American War and is buried beneath
the monument.
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Monument commemorating the Battle of Wyoming,
1778, Wyoming, Pennsylvania. Dedicated 1833,
completed 1843. The patriot dead are buried
inside the vault and are named on tablets on the
exterior, with officers named separately from
privates.
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Howells, Question of Monuments 1865   Had
anything come of the aesthetic sensation
immediately following the war, and the spirit of
martial pride with which it was so largely
mixed, we should probably have had a much greater
standing-army in bronze and marble than would
have been needed for the suppression of any
future rebellion. An excitement, a tumult, not
a tendency of our civilization, would thus have
been perpetuated, to misrepresent us and our age
to posterity for we are not a military
people.   The idea of our war seems to have
interpreted itself to us all as faith in the
justice of our cause, and in our immutable
destiny, as Gods agents, to give freedom to
mankind and the ideas of our peace are
gratitude and exultant industry Somehow, we
imagine, these ideas should be represented in
every memorial work of the time, though we should
be sorry to have this done by the dreary means
of conventional allegory.
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Howells A sublime parable, like Wards statue
of the Freedman, is the full expression of one
idea that should be commemorated, and would
better celebrate the great deeds of our soldiers
than bas-reliefs of battles, and statues of
captains, and groups of privates, or many
scantily-draped, improper figures, happily
called Liberties.
John Quincy Adams Ward, The Freedman, 1863,
Bronze statuette (20 tall).
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Martin Milmore, Soldiers Sailors
Monument, Boston Common, 1877
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Wendell Phillips, 1879 This otherwise perfect
column has one defect the one I have noticed in
every city and town monument raised since the
war. For anything these marble records tell, the
war might have been like that of 1812, for free
trade and sailors' rights or for a North-eastern
boundary. You search in vain through through them
all for the broken chain or the negro soldier.
Milmore had one better than his fellows, for he
gives us in one bas-relief, the stern and earnest
face of J.B. Smith, a suggestion welcome and
honorable. He should have done more. Perhaps
some time it can be mended, and a broken chain
and negro form tell what really saved the
Union. Perhaps, though, as the Greeks built the
monuments commemorating the civil wars of wood,
that they might soon crumble, leaving no angry
trace of the quarrel, so our artists thought best
to blot and raze almost everything that told of
the bitter issue in the rebellion. My thought
is, if enduring monuments are erected at all,
they should tell the truth. Let green sods cover
the battle-fields, unless you put there the
records of the whole truth.
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J.B. Smith
Return from the War, Bas-relief on Boston
Soldiers and Sailors Monument.
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Mills County, Texas
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Mt. Vernon, New York
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Pasadena, California
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Gettysburg Monument
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Century Magazine, September 1895  It is probably
within the fact to say that there are not four
pieces of good sculpture on the battlefield of
Gettysburg.There are a few unobtrusive pieces of
natural rock which fittingly express willing
sacrifice or unyielding valor but for the most
part that beautiful field the chosen valley for
the nation's salvation has become for lack of
coordination in plan and good taste in execution
an unsightly collection of tombstones.
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Henry Hornbostel, architect, Allegheny County
Soldiers and Sailors Memorial, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, 1910
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Allegheny County Soldiers and Sailors Memorial,
Auditorium.
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Haverhill, Massachusetts built1868 dedicated
July 4, 1869 moved 1999 Submitted by Kathleen
Dacey
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Haverhill, Massachusetts, 1868, 1869 Base
contains names of 187 Haverhill veterans who died
during the War. Submitted by Kathleen Dacey
Inscription 1861 1865 In grateful tribute to
the memory of those who, on land and sea, died
so that the republic might live. This monument
was erected A.D.1869.
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Haverhill, Massachusetts Submitted by Kathleen
Dacey
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Monument Square, Troy, New York Submitted by
Robert Naeher Monument Square, created in 1891
when a statue of Columbia was erected atop the
Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in the triangular
area formed by the intersection of Broadway,
River and Second streets, became a new focal
point of development
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Hertford, North Carolina Erected 1910
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Hertford, North Carolina Erected 1910
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Hertford, North Carolina Erected 1912
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Hertford, North Carolina Erected 1912
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Literature on collective memory and
monuments The field has become so vast that not
even academic specialists can keep track of it
anymore. I have written a couple of shorter
pieces for general audiences that are available
online The Past in the Present The Life of
Memorials (1999)http//www.gsd.harvard.edu/resear
ch/publications/hdm/back/9savage.pdf History,
Memory, and Monuments An Overview of the
Scholarly Literature on Commemoration
(2006) http//www.cr.nps.gov/history/resedu/savage
.htm A few classics include Civil War David
Blight, Race and Reunion The Civil War in
American Memory (Belknap Press, 2001). WWI Jay
Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning The
Great War in European Cultural History
(Cambridge, 1995). Holocaust James E. Young, The
Texture of Memory Holocaust Memorials and
Meaning (Yale, 1993).
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Final Slide. Thank You