Transcript The Shaw Memorial

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
• Moved to US with
parents while still an
infant
• One of America’s bestknown public sculptors
in the 19th century
• Commissioned for Shaw
Memorial in 1884,
unveiling in Boston 1898
Augustus St. Gaudens and Racism
• St. Gaudens included the names of
the white officers in the completed
Shaw Memorial. There was no
mention of any Negro officers.
• St. Gaudens referred to the models
for the Negro soldiers as “darkeys,”
and commented on their
“imaginative, though simple,
minds” and “amusing lies” about
taking part in the assault at Fort
Wagner.
• The bigotry of St. Gaudens is ironic,
considering the message of his Shaw
Memorial.
Slide by Nathan
Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907)
Farragut
Memorial
Diana
Liberty
Coin
The Puritan
Precursors and Background
The Shaw Memorial’s Conception
• Augustus St. Gaudens depicted
Shaw as an all-important figure,
watched over by the divine.
• Robert Gould Shaw’s family
objected to St. Gaudens’ making
the memorial into an equestrian
statue, calling it “pretentious.” They
felt a man of Shaw’s rank was not
deserving of such an honor.
– It was in response to this that St.
Gaudens included the Negro
soldiers in the memorial. In his
words, he “reconciled [his] desire
with their ideas.”
Slide by Nathan
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 AfricanAmericans, 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)
Shaw and the 54th
• Initially took position as commander of the 54th to please his mother,
who was an abolitionist.
– Originally did not share passion for abolition.
• Eventually grew to respect his men and believed they could fight as
well as white soldiers.
• Fought and held boycott until his soldiers received equal pay.
• On May 28, 1863 Shaw lead his troops on a parade in Boston where
they departed for South Carolina.
• 54th was originally tasked for manual labor and did not see action until
July 16th at James Island.
• Shaw and the 54th was chosen to lead the assault on Battery Wagner.
– 54th regiment proved to be as brave as any white troops, but Shaw
was killed in the assault.
• Shaw was buried in mass grave under his black troops.
Civil War Trust." Robert Gould Shaw. Civilwar.com, n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2012.
<http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/biographies/robert-gould-shaw.html>.
Slide by: Bert Stewart
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 AfricanAmerican 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
AfricanAmericans, and
women
• Bust of Shaw from
1864
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman was on hand for the battle at
Ft. Wagner. It is believed that she served
Colonel Shaw his last meal.
When the battle at Ft. Wagner
was over, Tubman is quoted as
saying
“And then we saw the lightning,
and that was the guns; and then
we heard the thunder, and that was
the big guns; and then we heard the
rain falling, and that was the drops
of blood falling; and when we came
to get the crops, it was dead men
that we reaped.”
Harriet Tubman
worked as a nurse at
Port Royal. She cared
for soldiers with
dysentery and small
pox.
She worked with
General David Hunter
(a strong abolition
supporter), who
declared all slaves
captured in Port
Royal freed and he
began gathering them
for a regiment of black
soldiers.
JoAnne Hileman
The attack on
Fort Wagner,
while a military
disaster, was
successful in
increasing the
number of black
enlistments in
the Union army
by tenfold after
the battle.
Slide by Ana Bogart
At the beginning of the war
soldiers on both sides made the same
$11/month, with the exception of the
black soldiers who received
$10/month, minus a $3 allowance
that was given to white soldiers for
uniforms. In June of 1864 the
Confederacy increased their pay to
$18/month. The Union army raised
their soldiers pay to $16/month.
The only exception to the pay
increase was for the black soldiers, if
they were free men before they joined
the military, their pay matched the
white soldiers, but if they were
recently freed slaves, their pay
remained $10/month-minus $3 per
month that the white soldiers got as a
uniform allowance.
JoAnne Hileman
Poets Inspired by the Events
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
James Russell Lowell
William Vaughn Moody
John Berryman
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow
• Robert Lowell
Paul Laurence Dunbar
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
My Hero
•
by Benjamin Brawley
The poem entitled “My Hero,”
published in 1922, was written by a
black Harlem Renaissance writer,
Benjamin Griffith Brawley, in honor
of the white Civil War colonel of the
all-black 54th regiment, Robert Gould
Shaw. The poem is noteworthy for the
time period because Brawley gives
homage to a white colonel who fought
to give black soldiers the honor and
respect due them, ultimately laying his
life down for a cause he believed in.
Slide by Ana Bogart
My Hero
by Benjamin Brawley April 22, 1882 - February 1, 1939
FLUSHED with the hope of high desire,
He buckled on his sword,
To dare the rampart ranged with fire,
Or where the thunder roared;
Into the smoke and flame he went,
For God’s great cause to die—
A youth of heaven’s element,
The flower of chivalry.
And Lancelot and Sir Bedivere
May pass beyond the pale,
And wander over moor and mere
To find the Holy Grail;
But ever yet the prize forsooth
My hero holds in fee;
And he is Blameless Knight in truth,
And Galahad to me.
This was the gallant faith, I trow,
Of which the sages tell;
On such devotion long ago
The benediction fell;
And never nobler martyr burned,
Or braver hero died,
Than he who worldly honor spurned
To serve the Crucified.
Slide by Ana Bogart
Robert Gould Shaw
Glory, 1989 Movie
• Starring Matthew
Broderick, Denzel
Washington, Cary
Elwes, Morgan
Freeman
Three Places in New England
Charles Ives (1874-1954)
(1914, revised 1929,
premiered 1931)
First Movement
‘The St. Gaudens in Boston
Common (Col. Shaw and
his Colored Regiment)’
Charles Ives
Three Places in
New England
Dedicatory Poem
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!
Details of Shaw Memorial
Position of Colonel Shaw
Legs of Soldiers and Horses
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 colorblind, 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!
Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial
• Official name of the Memorial is the Vietnam
Veterans Memorial
– Also known as VVM or “The Wall”
• Not a war Memorial
but a Memorial to
those who served in
the war, both living
and dead
• The names were NOT carved by hand, but by a
computerized typesetting process developed by
Larry Century, specifically for the Memorial, in
Memphis, Tennessee
Freya
• Founded by Jan Scruggs
• On July 1, 1980, in the Rose Garden, President
Jimmy Carter signed the legislation (P.L. 96-297)
to provide a site in Constitution Gardens near
the Lincoln Memorial
Freya
Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial:
Maya Lin
• Lin won a public design
competition for the Vietnam
Memorial in 1981 (21 years old)
• Unconventional design– Memorial
is deep in the Earth to symbolize
the gravity of loss of the soldiers
• Controversy because Lin was of
Asian Decent (Chinese-American)
• Lin is now a prestigious
architectural designer – won the
National Medal of Arts in 2009
Danielle
The Irish Brigade
-During the Civil War thousands of
Irish immigrants and Irish-American
fought on behalf of the Union in ethnic
regiments
-Many joined the Union to assimilate
into the American culture and also to
alleviate the anti-Irish prejudice in the
U.S.
-However, they Irish weren’t
completely unsympathetic to the
Confederate fight.
-They viewed the fight of the
Confederacy for independence against
the strong government as a
representation of the Irish fight against
the British.
-The Brigade was composed of 4
regiments: the 63rd and 69th from New
York, and the 88th and 29th regiments
from Massachusetts.
Angie Rodriguez
The Irish Brigade: Famous Battles
Antietam: On September 17, 1862, the brigade lead an attack on the
Confederate army on a sunken road farm that later became known as
“Bloody Lane” . They charged toward the confederate soldiers with
their bayonets. However that wasn’t enough to protect them and as a
result 60 percent of the New York regiments, 600 in total were killed.
-Battle of Fredericksburg, 545 men were either killed or wounded of the
original 1,200.
-In the battle of Gettysburg, 320 of the brigade’s remaining 530 men were
killed
-While many Irish died fighting for the Union resulting in the disbandment
of the brigade, their courage, bravery and fighting spirit made them
legendary among the other units.
Angie Rodriguez