Standing soldiers, kneeling slaves
Subtitle: race, war, and monument in nineteenth-century America
By: Kirk Savage.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Princeton, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 270
Subjects: Slaves -- Emancipation -- United States; Public sculpture, American -- 19th century; National characteristics, American -- History -- 19th century; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Social aspects; United States -- Race relations
Description: The United States of America originated as a slave society, holding millions of Africans and their descendants in bondage, and remained so until a civil war took the lives of a half million soldiers, some once slaves themselves. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves explores how that history of slavery and its violent end was told in public space - specifically in the sculptural monuments that increasingly came to dominate streets, parks, and town squares in nineteenth-century America.

Here Kirk Savage shows how the greatest era of monument building in American history arose amidst struggles over race, gender, and collective memory. As men and women North and South fought to define the war's legacy in monumental art, they reshaped the cultural landscape of American nationalism.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [215]-257) and index.