William Blake: Brothers' Bones Beside - Catalog - Page 7
A Revolutionary Paradox:
GEORGE WASHINGTON’S CONTESTED LEGACY
BY: ABBI SMITHMYER
arious artists have immortalized George Washington as
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whether North or South were the true inheritors of the first
a national symbol, with generations of Americans using
president’s legacy throughout the Civil War era. George
these paintings and sculptures to understand the Founding
Washington’s statue became a contested monument amid the
Father’s place within United States history. Unlike previous
bloody struggle between the United States and Confederacy.
works depicting the first president as a war hero or noble
With Houdon’s statue held in the Confederacy’s capital, the
statesman, William Blake’s painting To See a New Nation
white South was quick to claim it as proof that they were the
(page 12) encourages us to reflect on the changing perceptions
true inheritors of George Washington’s legacy. However, U.S.
of George Washington and our collective understanding of
General George B. McClellan’s 1862 march toward Richmond
America’s narrative history.
created concern. As Federal forces neared Richmond, a city
As both the first president of the United States and famed
newspaper suggested Houdon’s statue should be moved
general of the Revolutionary War, perhaps no individual
further south to keep it out of U.S. hands. “Were the Yankees
captures America’s founding principles of democracy and
ever to possess Richmond they would straightaway proceed to
freedom better than George Washington. His image has
appropriate Houdon’s Washington.” The marble Washington
become a symbol used to unite the nation, with French
was so important in uniting the Confederacy’s cause to the
sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon’s eighteenth-century marble
American Revolution that the newspaper even suggested the
statue being the most famous embodiment of Washington
statue should be buried in the ground if necessary.
due to its realistic depiction of him in both appearance and
Confederate fears over the capture of Houdon’s Washington
dress. Placed in the Virginia State Capitol’s Rotunda in 1796,
subsided following McClellan’s failed Peninsula Campaign.
Houdon’s statue immediately played into the sacred beliefs
Nevertheless, the bronze cast at the Virginia Military Institute
the country imposed on George Washington’s legacy, with it
faced a similar threat in June 1864, when U.S. General David
being used to evoke the treasured values Americans associated
Hunter led his troops through the Shenandoah Valley. Like
with him and his role in the nation’s founding.
Confederates, those in the Union also claimed Washington’s
Wanting to ensure the important symbol would survive in
perpetuity, Virginia legislatures authorized bronze copies of
image to justify their cause, with the bronze V.M.I. statue
proving an important symbolic target.
Houdon’s statue to be cast in the late 1840s, with the first
When General Hunter’s men arrived at the Virginia
sent to the commonwealth’s premier military school—the
Military Institute on June 13, 1864, they plundered the
Virginia Military Institute. Yet, Houdon’s statue of George
military school before setting it ablaze. Out of all the looted
Washington and its various bronze copies could not solve
relics, the most significant was the bronze copy of Houdon’s
the fundamental paradox of the coexistence of slavery and
Washington. Many justified the taking of the statue as a
freedom within American society. Once used to unite the
wartime trophy because it removed it from the traitorous
nation in their devotion to Washington’s values, the first
Confederate hands. A Connecticut soldier claimed the U.S.
president’s likeness instead became part of a proxy war over
troops “saved” the statue from the rebels, while a colonel
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