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The Shaw Memorial. An Example of Artistic Meanings in Multiple Genres, Across Time, Around an Event of Significance. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, The Shaw Memorial, 1884-98. Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907). • Saint-Gaudens born in Dublin, Ireland, to mixed Irish/French parentage
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The Shaw Memorial An Example of Artistic Meanings in Multiple Genres, Across Time, Around an Event of Significance
Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) • Saint-Gaudens born in Dublin, Ireland, to mixed Irish/French parentage • Moved to US with parents while still an infant • One of America’s best-known public sculptors in the 19th century • Commissioned for Shaw Memorial in 1884, unveiling in Boston 1898
Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) Farragut Memorial Diana Liberty Coin The Puritan
Massachusetts 54th Regiment – African-American Union Civil War Regiment – led by white officers, most notably Robert Gould Shaw (1837-1863) 54th organized in 1863, idea proposed and discussed by Union leaders, Abolitionists, and prominent African-Americans, including Frederick Douglass In training February-May 1863 In parade in Boston – May 1863 (Douglass and John Greenleaf Whittier present) To battlefield along SC & GA coast – June 1863 Assault on Fort Wagner – July 16, 1863 (Harriet Tubman & Clare Barton present)
Assault on Ft. Wagner, 1863 • Colonel Shaw and many of his men killed • Confederate soldiers buried Shaw and Black soldiers in a common grave, considering this an insult to Shaw
William Carney • Member of Massachusetts 54th • First African-American to receive the Medal of Honor • Noted for rescuing the flag when Col. Shaw fell at Ft. Wagner
Edmonia Lewis(ca.1845-1911) • Free Black father, Ojibwa mother; birth name “Wildfire” • Among first American women to attend college, at Oberlin - first US college to admit African-Americans, and women • Bust of Shaw from 1864
Poets Inspired by the Events Paul Laurence Dunbar • James Russell Lowell • William Vaughn Moody • John Berryman • Thomas Bailey Aldrich • Paul Laurence Dunbar • Ralph Waldo Emerson • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Robert Lowell So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can. Emerson - from Voluntaries
Glory, 1989 Movie • Starring Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, Cary Elwes, Morgan Freeman
Three Places in New EnglandCharles Ives (1874-1954) (1914, revised 1929, premiered 1931)First Movement‘The St. Gaudens in Boston Common (Col. Shaw and his Colored Regiment)’
Moving, - Marching - Faces of Souls! Marked with generations of pain, Part-freers of a Destiny, Slowly, restlessly - swaying us on with you Towards other Freedom! The man on horseback, carved from A native quarry of the world Liberty And from what your country was made. You images of a Divine Law Carved in the shadow of a saddened heart - Never light abandoned - Of an age and of a nation. Above and beyond that compelling mass Rises the drum-beat of the common-heart In the silence of a strange and Sounding afterglow Moving - Marching - Faces of Souls! Charles IvesThree Places in New EnglandDedicatory Poem
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) • The Abolitionists, both Black and white, had imagined an anti-racist future, but the white majority society moved towards prejudice after the Civil War • Plessy v. Ferguson was the Supreme Court decision that legalized segregation, as long as facilities were “separate but equal” • It represented the apogee of a resurgent white supremacism, that now pretended to scientific bases for its racism
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)Excerpts from the decision • “if one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane” • “the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument…(is) the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so…(it is) solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.” • Laws upholding segregation “do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other”
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) • Lone dissenting vote on the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, John Marshall Harlan (1833-1911) was born in Kentucky and had been a slave-holder through the Civil War, even while serving in the Union army. • He wrote in his dissent “Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.”
“Robert Gould Shaw”(1900) by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) Why was it that the thunder voice of Fate Should call thee, studious, from the classical groves, Where calm-eyed Pallas with still footstep roves, And charge thee seek the turmoil of the state? What bade thee hear the voice and rise elate, Leave home and kindred and thy spicy loaves, To lead th’ unfettered and despised droves To manhood’s home thunder at the gate?
“Robert Gould Shaw”(1900) by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) Far better the slow blaze of Learning’s light The cool and quiet of her dearer fane, Than this hot terror of a hopeless fight This cold endurance of the final pain— Since thou and those who died for right Have died, the Present teaches, but in vain!
Questions and Theories • Recirculation of Ideas • What questions of nationality and identity are at issue? • What function does the 54th play in American self-consciousness? Northern? Southern? White? Black? Male?
Longfellow’s Observation of the 54th in Boston, 1863 “Saw the first regiment of blacks march through Beacon Street. An imposing sight, with something wild and strange about it, like a dream. At last the North consents to let the Negro fight for freedom.”
Position of Colonel Shaw Legs of Soldiers and Horses
Homework for 11/14 • Review this show, and based on the article you read, and any further research you choose to do, create two additional slides for this show that would add to the show’s content • You can use any design format you wish • Make your work as error-free as possible • Spelling and grammar errors are likely to preclude the possibility of a √+ for this assignment • SIGN your work, in case I do include your slides in a new updated show. • Submit by email to me by 11:59 pm November 13!
