Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 The Hat, the Horse, and the Hero: The Impact of Civil War Newspaper Illustrations of the Battle of Wilson’s Creek on the Legacy of General Nathaniel Lyon Joan Stack, Curator of Art Collections, The State Historical Society of Missouri During the third week of August 1861, the Eastern seaboard of the United States was abuzz with reports of a significant Civil War battle in Missouri. This battle, which occurred just weeks after Bull Run, was the first important battle in the West. Union forces under General Nathaniel Lyon had taken control of Jefferson City on July 15, 1861. The state’s Confederate sympathizing governor, Claiborne Fox Jackson, was forced to flee the capital. In a bid to regain control, state guard troops loyal to Jackson prepared to confront Lyon’s federal Army of the West near the Southwestern Missouri town of Springfield. Rebel General Sterling Price (former governor of Missouri and commander of Governor Jackson’s state guard) was joined by Confederate troops under the command of General Benjamin McCulloch. This coalition force of around 12,000 badly outnumbered Lyon’s army of just under 6000 men.1 Recognizing the unfavorable odds, General Lyon reportedly expressed reluctance to confront the rebels. Yet he feared retreat would disgrace his command and empower his enemies. At around 5:00 a.m. on August 10, he launched a surprise assault on the rebel cavalry camp, situated ten miles southwest of Springfield near Wilson’s Creek. Lyon led one column of men while Union Colonel Franz Sigel oversaw another. The battle raged throughout the early morning hours, with neither side dominating the fight. At around 9:30, General Lyon personally led one column of men into battle at a site later called Bloody Hill. During this charge, he was shot and killed. Major Samuel Sturgis assumed Lyon’s command and managed to maintain the position, albeit with heavy casualties. The rebels, however, had routed Sigel’s column south of Skegg’s Branch. With Lyon dead, Union forces exhausted, and ammunition depleted, Sturgis ordered a retreat to Springfield. The rebels held the field but suffered casualties estimated at 1,095, which approached the Union’s 1,235.2 Too disorganized and ill-equipped to pursue the Army of the West, the rebels’ progress stalled. Nevertheless, the success at Wilson’s Creek (also called the Battle of Oak Hills) was lauded by Southern sympathizers as a step towards gaining control of Missouri. In the North, it was promoted as a nearvictory for the Union against almost impossible odds. Reports in Northern papers immediately focused on the most sensational aspect of the battle: the death of the first Union general killed in action.3 Official military reports followed on August 20. Major Samuel Sturgis described Lyon’s death as follows: In the meantime, the general mounted and, swinging his hat in the air, called to the troops nearest him to follow. . .. about the same time, a fatal ball was lodged in the general's breast, and he was carried from the field a corpse. Thus gloriously fell as brave a soldier as ever drew a sword –a man whose honesty of purpose was proverbial –a noble patriot and one who held his life as nothing when his country demanded it of him.4 1 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 Sturgis could not resist editorializing as he described Lyon’s demise. The major’s emphasis on the general’s virtue, patriotism, and sacrifice foreshadows the propagandistic cast of representations of Lyon’s death in pictures and prose for decades to come. Reports in the Illustrated Press Images representing Lyon’s final moments appeared within days of his death. In August 1861, nationally distributed New York journals, Harper’s Weekly, the New York Illustrated News, and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper published eight wood engravings of the Battle of Wilson’s Creek. Most promoted the incident as the occasion of General Nathaniel Lyon’s “heroic” demise. Without an illustrated paper, the South had no organ to advance a pro-Southern vision of the battle. 5 Though understudied, newspaper images played an essential role in shaping the public’s understanding of the Civil War. Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper each had subscription rates of over 100,000.6 Non-subscribers, including the illiterate, viewed these newspapers in homes, libraries, and on the street. Even African Americans held in bondage had occasional access to these images. Mattie J. Jackson, an enslaved teenager living in St. Louis during the war, described her experience with illustrated newspapers in 1861: “My mother and myself could read enough to make out the news in the papers. The Union soldiers took much delight in tossing a paper over the fence to us. It aggravated my mistress very much. My mother used to sit up nights and read to keep posted about the war. . .. On one occasion, Mr. Lewis searched my mother's room and found a picture of President Lincoln, cut from a newspaper, hanging in her room. He asked her what she was doing with old Lincoln's picture. She replied it was there because she liked it. He then knocked her down three times and sent her to the trader's yard for a month as punishment.”7 Jackson’s words reflect the power of illustrations to engage, inspire, and even enrage a wide range of nineteenth-century. audiences. To better appreciate the consumption of these pictures, an 1864 centerfold illustration for Harper’s Weekly entitled, The Press in the Field, is especially instructive. (fig. 1) (fig.1, photo courtesy of the author)) Designed by the famed illustrator and cartoonist Thomas Nast, this wood engraving addresses illustrated newspapers' creation, reception, and influence during the Civil War. The tripartite design, with vignettes in roundels, calls to mind centuries-old multi-panel altarpieces in the Christian tradition. The main panels of the “triptych” depict war correspondents gathering oral and visual information. In the fictive, altar-like space in front of the panels, a field sketchbook lies open like a Bible or prayer book. This bizarre, reverent presentation imbues the press with a quasi-sacred status.8 2 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 The three main panels of The Press in the Field address methods reporters and illustrators used to report on military action in the field. Journalists were kept away from dangerous action for their safety, so they relied on second-hand reports for much of their information. In the three main panels, Nast pictured reporters and artists interviewing witnesses and gathering information from various sources. Below these panels, Nast created two circular vignettes that represented the popular reception of illustrated newspapers by civilian and military audiences. In “Newspapers at Home,” a father sits in his parlor or living room, surrounded by his wife and children. The family looks at the paper and “consumes” its reports and images at home, in what has been called “the first living room war.”9 Behind this domestic vignette, Nast shows the distribution of papers in the nation’s towns and cities. A boy jogs through the streets, selling copies of a journal to eager buyers. (detail left corner fig. 1) In “The Newspaper in Camp,” two soldiers sit before a row of tents, perusing newspapers. Their standing comrades gather around to study the reports and illustrations. Outside this vignette, a figure on horseback distributes newspapers within a military camp.10 (detail right corner fig. 1) These contemporary images of the consumers of illustrated newspapers depict how consumers’ visualizations of the news created a shared “memory” of military action in homes, camps, and elsewhere. Historians rarely address the essential artificial and imaginative nature of the creation and experience of this material culture. Instead, many use Civil War newspaper images to “illustrate” historical texts without comment. In so doing, they allow the images to continue to shape the public’s collective “memory” of the war while leaving the character of that influence unanalyzed. 11 Ignoring the creative and propagandistic aspects of these illustrations maintains the illusion of their objectivity. Many past and present viewers have accepted this illusion without reflection. Audiences may be intellectually aware that the images are fictive constructions. However, they suspend disbelief, as the pictures aid in their imaginative reconstruction of history. The newspapers themselves fostered this interpretive fantasy. In 1866, the producers of a Harper’s compilation of Civil War news reports and 3 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 images insisted that the book represented events “just as they occurred.” 12 Finally, views from “behind the lines” encouraged viewer identification and implied partisan sympathies. Many newspaper artists worked entirely from written reports and photographs to envision battle scenes imaginatively. Other illustrators were “embedded” with military units and sent drawings from the field to be engraved by the great newspaper presses in New York City. Few of these field drawings were eyewitness renderings. Field artists only sometimes saw the newsworthy events they depicted. Sketching a battle in progress was almost impossible. As Nast shows in The Press in the Field, artists fashioned images from memory, hearsay, and battle reports. Frank Leslie’s illustrator, Henry Lovie, described how he created his drawings of the Battle of Shiloh after the battle. Following the bloody event, the artist visited the soldiers and “listened to all stories from all sides.” He also visited the sites where the battle took place, making “upwards of 20 local sketches of positions and scenes. . .. .”13 Moreover, nineteenth-century illustrations often alluded to visual precedents that were likely familiar to their audiences. Artists and their audiences were aware of a standard canon of “great” artworks dating from antiquity to the 1800s. Popular prints reproduced these images for audiences of every class. To visualize topical events on strict deadlines, newspaper artists borrowed from the era's visual culture. Naturally (and sometimes intuitively), they selected compositional models that evoked emotional responses with social, religious, and political undertones. 14 Since the lived experience of war was disorganized and chaotic, artists like Lovie created order in their battlefield images. They manipulated their visual forms to convey cohesive narratives and emphasized characteristic uniforms and weaponry to elucidate action. Panoramic landscapes portrayed the scope and scale of battles, and site-specific topography provided geographic information. Centermost and uppermost elements attracted the eye, and images “read” like Western texts, from left to right. The rightward movement appeared forceful, progressing forward, while leftward movement seemed challenging and difficult. War correspondents inserted flags into scenes to identify protagonists and antagonists. Civil War art depends heavily on two pictorial traditions: the heroic and the religious. While most people would expect to see references to the heroic tradition in war imagery, religious allusions may seem surprising to today’s audiences. However, as George Rable observes in God’s Almost Chosen People: A Religious History of the American Civil War, most nineteenth-century Americans understood the military events in a Christian context. Rable writes, “Given [the era’s] assumptions about divine sovereignty and God’s role in human history, northerners and southerners anxiously looked for early signs of the Lord’s favor.” Rable argues that Americans saw “providence” as the force that gave meaning to history. 15 Imagery was a part of the nineteenth-century religious experience. Bibles and other Christian texts were often illustrated, enriching the spiritual life of the literate and illiterate alike. Art historian Kristen Schwain writes in Signs of Grace. Religion and American Art in the Gilded Age, “Tastemakers assumed that fine art–as 4 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 well as mass-produced versions of it–would instill [religious] virtue, secure the cultural tradition, and educate the national citizenry generally.” This thirst for morally edifying images undoubtedly increased during wartime.16 Inside the paper, the centerfold presents a panoramic portrayal of Lyon’s battlefield death. The general falls with arms raised before a cloud of smoke. (fig. 3). Lyon as a Modern St. Paul References to the European Christian artistic canon appear in the first two images of the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, published on August 24, 1861, by Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. The dying General Lyon graced the cover of this issue. (fig. 2) At the picture’s center, the fallen leader lies on the ground, embraced by a fellow soldier. Four figures rush to his aid as the general gazes skyward, raising his hat aloft. (fig. 2, photo courtesy of the author) (fig. 3, photo courtesy of the author)) While both images refer to aspects of official battle reports, they also allude to Christian precedents. Parallels exist with canonical images of the New Testament Conversion of St. Paul. In the Biblical book of Acts, Paul (formerly Saul) converts to Christianity after divine revelation causes him to fall from his saddle on his ride to Damascus.17 In artwork from the Middle Ages onward, the converted Paul is frequently shown on the ground beside his horse, reaching for the heavens. Around 1675, Bartolomé Murillo painted a version of this scene that is especially analogous to the Frank Leslie’s cover. (fig. 4) (fig. 4, photo courtesy of the Prado) 5 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 In Murillo’s picture (now in Madrid’s Prado), the artist painted St. Paul beside his fallen horse on the ground. The saint reaches toward a celestial figure of Christ as a companion supports the apostle’s body.18 If one reverses the composition, its mirror image is very similar to the Frank Leslie’s cover. While the illustrator may not have seen Murillo’s painting in person, he likely knew works derived from it, such as an engraving of Paul’s conversion by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld published in Schnorr’s Bible Pictures by the British firm of Williams and Norgate in 1860. (fig. 5) Scripture History for the Improvement of Youth, an 1851 spiritual guide for young people in nineteenth-century America 1851.19 (figs. 7) (fig. 5, photo courtesy of the author) The Frank Leslie’s centerfold also recalls images of St. Paul. It presents a panoramic battle scene with Lyon at the center. A “halo” of smoke surrounds the general, who has just been shot and falls from his horse. The image recalls depictions of Paul’s conversion that show the saint tumbling from his saddle, such as Hans Baldung Grein’s ca. 1515 woodcut (fig. 6), and popular nineteenth-century examples such as the anonymous engraving that illustrated Tallis’s Illustrated (fig. 6, top and fig. 7, bottom, photos courtesy of the author) Lyon's outstretched arms explicitly show the religious implications of Frank Leslie’s centerfold. “Crucifixion arms” appear in several St. Paul conversion images, 6 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 most famously in the ca. 1520s tapestry designed by Raphel that hangs in the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican (fig. 8) and the celebrated 1601 painting by Caravaggio in S. Maria del Popolo, Rome (fig. 9). this way, Frank Leslie’s illustration may have extended the implied relationship between Christ’s passion, Paul’s mission, and Lyon’s sacrifice for the Union cause. As Sturgis’ battle report portends, stories of the general’s ultimate sacrifice almost immediately endowed Lyon with an iconic, savior-like character. Nineteenth-century viewers might connect the general’s transformative death with the concept of a Pauline spiritual or moral awakening. Indeed, audiences who viewed Lyon's death on the cover of the August 24 issue of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper could read an article inside the paper that began with the words, “The country is waking up to the reality of war.” 20 Before his death, Lyon was celebrated in popular culture as an uncompromising defender of the Union. 21 After his fall, he became a national martyr. As his body traveled from Missouri back to his Ashford, Connecticut home, thousands viewed it en route in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Jersey City, New York, and Hartford. Over 10,000 people attended Lyon’s funeral, where former Connecticut governor Chauncey Cleveland addressed the crowd. The dead Lyon became a Paul-like “apostle” and martyr for the Northern cause, his new posthumous identity inspiring a nation newly awakened to the urgency of the effort to save the Union. 22 (fig. 8, top, photo courtesy of the Vatican, and fig. 9, bottom, photo courtesy of S. Maria del Popolo) Scholars generally agree that Raphael and Caravaggio chose this pose to manifest Paul’s newfound commitment to imitate Christ as an apostle. By representing Lyon in The ”Passion” of General Lyon and Benjamin West’s Death of General Wolfe Returning to the Frank Leslie’s cover image, the vision of Lyon expiring into his companion’s arms may have 7 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 also encouraged nineteenth-century associations between the wood engraving and the famous and often imitated Death of General Wolfe by American painter Benjamin West, now in the National Gallery of Canada. (fig. 10) After The Death of General Wolfe popularized the concept, sentimental compositions centered on war heroes dying in the arms of comrades became common in military art for the next two centuries. 26 John Trumbull’s 1784 Death of General Warren at Bunker Hill (Museum of Fine Arts Boston) was a particularly popular American variation.27 This image has several compositional elements in common with the Frank Leslie’s cover, including a figure rushing towards Warren from the right. (fig. 11) (fig. 10, photo courtesy the National Gallery of Canada) Wolfe was a pre-revolutionary British general who died in battle against the French on September 13, 1759, on the Plains of Abraham, Quebec. This decisive victory, during which Wolfe sacrificed his life, was a turning point for the British in the French and Indian Wars.23 West’s painting, which was first displayed in 1771, changed the nature of European and American battle images. It broke with earlier allegorical traditions by depicting a believable (though staged and romanticized) military death scene.24 West’s picture was much admired in the nineteenth century, and its reproduction as a famous engraving by William Wollet in 1775 ensured its worldwide fame. The painter based the pose of Wolfe and his companions on images of the dead Christ mourned by his followers (depositions and pietàs). These well-respected precedents gave The Death of General Wolfe dignity and pathos while also implying that Wolfe’s sacrifice had parallels to that of Christ. 25 (fig. 11 photo courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston) In all three pictures, the intimate physical contact between the dying generals (Wolfe, Warren, and Lyon) and their companions brings emotional poignancy to the experience of viewing the scenes. In Frank Leslie’s wood engraving (details of figs. 6 and 11) 8 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 the visual parallels between Wolfe, Warren, and Lyon also reinforce the idea that Lyon participated in an American legacy of patriotic self-sacrifice. At the same time, the compositional allusions to pietà imagery might have encouraged viewers to associate military sacrifice with the “wages” of sin. This brutal analysis of the horror of war was visually illustrated in the centerfold on August 31. (fig. 12). This image challenges the notion that early Civil War illustrations ignored the human costs of the conflict. 31 In 1861, Unionists were likely to equate such transgressions with the “national” sins of secession, slavery, and war.28 The idea that the United States was already paying for its wrongs through war-time death and suffering resonated with Unionists. On August 12, President Lincoln declared that September 26, 1861, would be a national day of “fasting, humiliation, and prayer. . . in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and individuals.” This announcement implicitly associated the sacred with the secular, connecting the war with the shared religious atonement of the nation. 29 For some, casualties on the battlefield may have embodied this concept. In the August 31 issue of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, the paper published the following report of casualties at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek: The loss of the Union force is definitely ascertained to have been 223 killed, 721 wounded, and 291 missing– or a total of 944 killed and wounded. This loss of onefifth, or 20 percent of the whole number engaged, shows with what determination the battle was fought by Lyon’s heroic band. . . Had the French and Austrians fought with corresponding determination at Solferino, their aggregate loss would have been 80,000 instead of 30,000. 30 (fig. 12, top and detail of fig. 12, bottom; photos courtesy of the author) The artist Henry Lovie presented a view behind the Union lines. As the battle wages in the background, the foreground reminds viewers of the war’s deadly consequences. Lovie portrayed wounded and dead bodies across the foreground plane. At right, a horsedrawn ambulance commands attention as a body is hoisted into its wagon bed. A stunned soldier sits upright on the ground as though recovering from a body blow. Another man carries a wounded companion on his back, an action that recalls images of Aeneas carrying his father from the besieged city of Troy. 9 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 Other soldiers attend to one another in intimate proximity, recalling the central group in The Death of General Wolfe. Yet here, anonymous soldiers suffer. Unlike the cover image that Frank Leslie’s published on August 24, there is no heroic focus in this scene of mass carnage on the battlefield. Perhaps to relieve the somber implications of this centerfold, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper decided to revisit Lyon’s heroic death elsewhere in the August 31 issue, with Lovie’s interpretation of the subject. (Fig. 13) The original sketch for this picture survives in the collection of the New York Public Library (fig. 14). In the drawing, Lovie portrayed Lyon falling backward, holding but not waving his hat. The artist foresaw the symbolic power of the hat, however, which warranted its own mini sketch in the upper portion of the sheet. After publishing two illustrations of the dying Lyon in the August 24 paper, Frank Leslie’s editors may have ordered their New York artists to change the composition to show Lyon immediately before his fall, thus generating a more inspirational image. (fig. 13, photo courtesy of the author) (fig. 14, photo courtesy of the New York Public Library) While not a two-page centerfold, this image fills an entire single page. Lovie shows us Lyon’s final moments behind the Union lines, providing his audience with a federal soldier’s view of the action. Lyon is seen from the back at the center of the composition. He rides leftward, his movement suggesting strained progress. As the general’s horse rears, Lovie shows him waving his hat in the moments before the fatal bullet hits him. Further impetus for the modification may have come from the paper’s primary competitors, Harper’s Weekly and the New York Illustrated News, who published “heroic” pictures of the hat-waving Lyon leading his men into battle. 10 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 The New York Illustrated News’ Classicized Vision of Wilson Creek as an Epic Battle Frieze On Monday, August 26, 1861, the New York Illustrated News (NYIN) reported news from the Battle of Wilson’s Creek in its pages. Instead of picturing General Lyon on the cover of the issue, the NYIN’s front page portrayed a Missouri military leader who survived the battle, the newly promoted Brigadier General Frans Sigel (fig. 15). suggests an optimistic vision of Siegel’s leadership on the Western frontier. 32 Inside the New York Illustrated News, verbal description of Sigel, the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, and the Union situation in the West is less favorable. A reporter for the paper wrote, “General Franz Siegel (sic) is obtaining a celebrity in defeat.” The journalist goes on to fault Union leadership at Wilson’s Creek, stating: “We ought not to lose a battle! And when we hear that a Union force of eight thousand has attacked a rebel army of twenty thousand, so far from feeling admiration for the audacity of the Union commander, we desire that he should have a Court Martial for his foolhardiness.” 33 Despite these harsh words, the paper’s discussion of the deceased Commanding General Nathaniel Lyon is positive. In introducing an eye-witness description of the late general, the paper claims Lyon was already viewed as “the savior of Missouri” before the battle. The reporter writes, (fig. 15, photo courtesy of the author) The artist likely copied a studio photograph for the foreground figure of Sigel, although the general is shown in a military setting. Behind him, fighting men wave hats, swords, and an American flag. A military groom holds a horse ready for action. The composition “The sketch was written at a time when the loyal men of the Union regarded Gen. Lyon as the savior of Missouri from rebel rule. We read it now with the same feelings as those which warm us as we regard a portrait of the dead.” 34 Inside the paper, a heroic centerfold illustration celebrates Lyon’s final charge. (fig. 16). According to the newspaper text, an eyewitness, J. S. Scheibel, made a drawing on-site that served as the model for the paper’s illustration. However, Scheibel's drawing 11 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 was likely only roughly related to the final wood engraving published in the paper. The young Thomas Nast undoubtedly radically reworked the drawing in the tradition of heroic battle images. Nast signed the composition, indicating that he considered it his own. 35 (fig. 16, photo courtesy of the author) Nast pictured Lyon charging into battle (fig. 16). Viewers assume the point of view of an observer nearby as the action proceeds frieze-like across the picture plane. The torso of the mounted general is at the pinnacle of a moving pyramid of figures silhouetted against the sky—his outstretched right arm points forward as he clenches his hat in his hand. Foot soldiers join in the rightward charge. They rush forward and block our view of the general’s horse and the background scene. The shallow space calls to mind martial reliefs, particularly those on Roman sarcophagi. Directly behind the general, an American flag points diagonally upward. It joins the repeated, right-facing diagonals of bayonets and legs running in step to suggest movement. Near Lyon’s horse, a foot soldier falls backward in a Christ-like pose, foreshadowing the general’s imminent fate. Nearby, another charging soldier drops his gun and falls forward as the dead and wounded sprawl across the ground. The composition's rightward thrust ends when the “frieze” of figures is interrupted by a glimpse of the background landscape with troops in the distance. At the edge of the picture frame, the perpendicular form of a foot soldier interrupts the composition's rightward diagonal thrust, suggesting suspended advancement. He faces the distant troops and steps towards the smoke-filled landscape, bayonet pointing leftward. Compositionally, the wood engraving owes much to Antoine-Jean Gros’ 1810 picture, Napoleon Haranguing the Army at the Battle of the Pyramids. at the Palace of Versailles. (fig. 17). The gestures of the mounted generals are especially close. (fig. 17, photo courtesy of the Palace of Versailles) Gros’ picture, like Nast’s, ultimately derives from Imperial Roman friezes, such as the relief on the Ludovisi Battle Sarcophagus, which dates to ca. 250-280 CE (fig. 18). 36 This pedigree imbues both with a timeless, epic grandeur. Gros shows Napoleon delivering his famous message to his soldiers in Egypt. Pointing rightward, the French 12 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 (fig. 18, photo courtesy of the National Museum of Rome, Palazzo Altemps) leader announces, “Soldiers, from the height of these pyramids, forty centuries are watching us.” For those in the know, Nast’s allusion might encourage a connection between Napoleon’s words and the Union Cause. Many probably believed centuries of future Americans would look back on this epic fight as instrumental in answering questions about the historical viability of representative democracy nationally.37 Although Lyon’s fatal charge appeared in the centerfold, the editors of the August 26 issue of the New York Illustrated News also felt the general’s death warranted a full-page illustration (fig. 19). This unsigned composition (perhaps Thomas Nast) is also related to John Trumbull’s Death of General Warren at Bunker Hill (fig. 11). Lyon’s pose mimics Warren’s as the Union leader sinks into his companion's arms, sword still in hand. Unlike Trumbull’s Warren, however, Lyon remains alert. His open-eyed gaze may illustrate Lyon’s dying moments as described in the newspaper’s text, “He [Lyon] was asked if he was hurt, and replied, ‘No, not much,’ but in a few minutes expired without a struggle.” 38 As in Trumbull’s composition, the NYIN artist creates a compositional pyramid made up of the general and his attendants. A standing figure forms the apex, the left slope consists of a kneeling figure supporting the dying Lyon, and a forward-striding soldier crates the sloping right side. Behind this group, the fight goes on. The repetitive poses and profiles recall the frieze-like composition of the centerfold, reflecting the movement of an infantry charge. Pictorial elements suggest the lost potential of the fallen general. A dead soldier at left foreshadows the leader’s imminent demise. An abandoned bayonet and Lyon’s plumed hat sit on the sunlit ground. A riderless horse stands alert, held by a soldier who looks toward the dying general. Readers might associate this horse with the animal behind Sigel on the paper’s front page– the living and dead riders representing a changing of the guard. Lyon as Archetypal Mounted Leader and Heir to the Glory of the Founders (fig. 19, photo courtesy of the author)) Perhaps the most heroic and iconic Wilson Creek images published in the U.S. illustrated press appeared a few days later on the cover of the August 31, 1861, issue of Harper’s Weekly. The composition by an unidentified artist depicts General Lyon waving his hat 13 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 as he rides forward. As an image, it functions more as a posthumous portrait than a narrative portrayal of Lyon’s battlefield exploits (fig. 20). The mounted general astride a galloping steed dominates the composition. The rightward-facing horse storms into the viewer’s space, suggesting forceful progress. The general looks back, presenting an ennobling near profile. He raises his right arm, hat in As a posthumous equestrian portrait, the Harper’s cover recalls a portrait type traditionally reserved for heroic military and political leaders. For centuries, the ultimate source for most such portraits was the secondcentury CE bronze sculpture of Marcus Aurelius, which has been publicly displayed in Rome for almost a millennium. (fig. 21) (fig. 21, photo courtesy of the author) (fig. 20, photo courtesy of the author) hand, still controlling his horse. Below the animal’s hooves lies a fallen soldier. The artist limits spatial depth with a “curtain” of imprecisely rendered foot soldiers behind Lyon (the most distinct holds his gun up in a posture of battle readiness). The form of the general’s upper torso and arm stand out against the lighter tone of the background sky. While not every American would be familiar with the Marcus Aurelius equestrian portrait, many Harper’s readers would likely have been aware of recent equestrian monuments that had been created in the United States that recalled the Marcus Aurelius model. Henry Kirke Brown's bronze sculpture of George Washington erected in New York City in 1856 would likely have been particularly familiar to many viewers. (fig. 22) 14 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 Andrew Jackson waving his hat by Clark Mills erected in Washington D. C. in 1853 (fig. 23). A replica was also erected in New Orleans in 1856. (fig. 23, photo courtesy of the author) (fig. 22, photo courtesy of the author) The horse in Brown’s sculpture is very similar to Lyon’s steed. It would likely have been a convenient stationary model for the Harper’s illustrator working in a New York Office, far from the battle lines.39 The Mills’ Andrew Jackson sculpture was closely associated with the Union cause because the north side of its base was decorated with text paraphrasing Jackson’s 1830 condemnation of secession, “OUR FEDERAL UNION /IT/ MUST BE PRESERVED,” These pro-Union words were moved to the less visually conspicuous west side of the statue’s base in 1909, but they can be seen as they appeared during the Civil War in a lithograph by Thomas Sinclair, published by Casimir Bohn in 1853. The print shows a view of the sculpture in Lafayette Park, with the White House in the background.40 (fig. 24) (Detail of fig. 20) Likewise, Americans nationwide would have been familiar with the rearing bronze equestrian portrait of (fig. 24, photo courtesy of the author) 15 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 Nineteenth-century viewers who associated the Harper’s cover with equestrian portraits of Washington and Jackson might see a connection between Lyon and America’s victorious military heroes of the past. 41 By presenting Lyon in an image that resembled other portrayals of America’s military heroes, the Harper’s cover implied that the Civil War general emulated their valor. (fig. 25, top, photo courtesy of the Vatican Museum and fig. 26, bottom, photos courtesy of the author) (detail of fig. 20) As in all equestrian portraits, Lyon’s war horse becomes an extension of its rider’s being–a masculine attribute of his power. The image has an intimidating aspect as Lyon charges into the viewer’s space, his steed trampling over a fallen U.S. soldier. On a literal level, this ruthless treatment of the dead suggests a hardened, single-minded will to fight. The fallen figure may also foreshadow Lyon’s own death and serve as a grim reminder of the realities of war. On a figurative or symbolic level, the visual trope of a mighty horseman trampling over bodies is an ancient emblem of military power. Similar images appear on Roman coins and in imperial statuary as depictions of martial triumphs, such as the ca. 380 CE Sarcophagus of St. Helena (fig, 24) and a ca. 280 CE coin minted under the Roman emperor Probus. (fig. 25) The imagery resurfaced periodically in Western art over the centuries, appearing, for example, in an 1818-century medal commissioned by the U.S. Congress to commemorate the 1813 Battle of the Thames. Here, Kentucky Governor Isaac Shelby charges over the Shawnee Chief Tecumseh, who fell in the battle at the hands of Col. Johnston. (fig. 26) (fig. 26 at left, with detail of horseman at right, photos courtesy of the author) These visual allusions might have encouraged viewers of Harper’s covers to associate Gen. Lyon’s image with emblems of martial might that instilled fear and 16 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 awe in allies and adversaries alike. The iconic and emblematic aspects of the image also allow Lyon to “perform” and inspire viewers as the heroic, transformative figure alluded to in other images. The image also has theatrical implications. The front page “frames” the general with a proscenium arch-like background (compare the Harper’s cover with fig. 27, Laura Keene’s Broadway theatre, from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, Dec. 13, 1856). Lyon rides forward towards “center stage” in a relatively shallow space. His hat-waving is addressed not just to his troops but also to the Harper’s audience. He is portrayed as an archetypal military hero. The fiction that this picture (or any of the images above) represented a “true” record of Lyon’s last moments is a delusion that was probably readily embraced in the nineteenth century, although few would defend it as rational. The image and all it represented fed a shared need for heroic exemplars early in the war. Since Lyon was dead, he could not tarnish the reputation of his new heroic persona. The dead hero was “resurrected” in this and other newspaper images, reassuring Unionists that the federal army had the power and heroism to win the war. As Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper reported in its August 31 issue, the Union’s heroic stand at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek could potentially “. . . inspire confidence in the courage and steadiness of our volunteers, more than compensating for the doubts and fears to which the circumstances of the flight from Bull Run have given rise.”43 Lyon as a Western Martyr, Atoning for the Sins of a Nation (figs 27 and 20, photos courtesy of the author) Although Lyon was said to have worn a modest captain’s jacket in the battle, he is shown in his brigadier general’s coat on the Harper’s cover. The unknown artist visualizes Lyon’s physical heroism and self-sacrifice in a way that likely reassured viewers that the Union army was ready, willing, and able to fight. This powerful image had the potential to prompt admiration, identification, or even imitation of Lyon in those who saw it.42 Although the heroic Harper’s cover image implied victory, the report inside the paper acknowledged that the battle’s outcome was a stalemate (or worse). The paper illustrated Colonel Franz Sigel's struggles with an image that visualized a context and setting for the cover image. This half-page engraving, Sigel Forcing Prisoners to Draw off his Canon at the Battle of Springfield, presents a panoramic view of the Wilson’s Creek battlefield (fig. 28). Bodies of the dead and wounded litter the landscape. In the foreground, a line of rebel prisoners occupies the central portion of the composition. Three grim17 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 faced prisoners lead the group, hauling the canon. To their left, Sigel's mounted figure assumes a commanding pose, arm outstretched, directing the captives. The picture illustrates an episode described in the Harper’s text: illustration, most of the prisoners wear military uniforms, yet the most prominent figure is hatless and clad in a suit of fringed leather. General Sigel had a very severe struggle, and lost three of his four guns. His artillery horses were shot in their harness, and the pieces disabled. He endeavored to haul them off with a number of prisoners he had taken, but was finally compelled to abandon them. . . .44 (detail fig. 28, photo courtesy of the author) (fig 28, photo courtesy of the author) Such leather clothing conforms with outfits worn by Indigenous Americans, Western fur traders, and mixed-race or Metis individuals of the era. Indeed, by the mid-nineteenth century, fringed leather had become so emblematic of the American West that the commander of the Department of the West, General John C. Frémont (previously famous as a Western explorer), adopted buckskin as his “signature” uniform. The image's leftward movement suggests the battle's hardship, as do the lost canons and dead horses in the background near the horizon. Yet the uppermost figure is the manly Sigel, riding a black stallion, his head surrounded by a white cloud. The artist diverts attention from the Union’s tactical losses by focusing on the general’s command and the humiliation of the rebel prisoners. Moreover, the imagery evokes the exotic setting of the “Western” theater by drawing attention to a long-haired, buckskin-clad rebel prisoner at the center of the composition. At Wilson’s Creek, Union forces fought a coalition of Southern Confederates and Missouri State Guardsmen, many of whom wore civilian clothes.45 In this (fig. 29, photo courtesy of the author) 18 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 Illustrator M. Nevin created a full-page equestrian portrait of Frémont in this “prairie costume,” published in Harper’s Weekly in July 1861. 46 (fig. 29) Returning to the Sigel image, the artist who depicted the leather-clad prisoner hauling the canon may have intended viewers to recognize him as an Indigenous or mixed-race person. Early reports describing the Battle of Wilson’s Creek mention Cherokee “half-breeds” among the rebels fighting with the Confederate General Benjamin McCullough. The leather-clad figure may have been designed to represent one of these fighters. Whether or not his presence reflects historical reality, his pictorial function is clear. He encourages eastern viewers to visualize Missouri as a battleground on the Western frontier (detail fig. 38) where “untamed” rebels jeopardized America’s dream of extending its borders across the wilderness.47 In the August 31 issue of Harper’s Weekly, Sigel Forcing Prisoners to Draw off his Canon and the heroic cover image of Lyon reinforced the idea that Wilson’s Creek was more than an ordinary battle. It was a heroic struggle to “save” America’s future as a mighty continental nation. While a quasi-sacred aspect of this mission had been suggested visually in the Frank Leslie’s images of Wilson’s Creek, Harper’s also used Christological allusions to describe Lyon’s sacrifice in its text. The newspaper’s emotionally charged description of the general’s behavior before and during the battle, calls to mind Biblical accounts of the Agony in the Garden, where Jesus foresees, doubts, and finally accepts his mission: For two or three days before the battle General Lyon changed much in appearance. Since it became apparent to him that he must abandon the Southwest or have his army cut to pieces, he had lost much of his former energy and decision. To one of his staff he remarked, the evening before the battle, "I am a man believing in presentiments, and ever since this night surprise was planned, I have had a feeling I can not get rid of that it would result disastrously . . . . . . . . On the way to the field I frequently rode near him. He seemed like one bewildered, and often when addressed failed to give any recognition, and seemed totally unaware that he was spoken to. . . . On the battlefield . . . . he was standing where bullets flew thickest, [and] some of his officers . . . begged that he would retire from the spot . . . . Scarcely raising his eyes from the enemy, he said: "It is well enough that I stand here. I am satisfied." . . . . Major Sturgis, during the conversation, noticed blood on General Lyon’s hat and, at first, supposed he had been touching it with his hand, which was wet with blood from his leg. A moment after, perceiving that it was fresh; he removed the General’s hat and asked the cause of its appearance. “It is nothing, Major, nothing but a wound in the head,” said General Lyon, turning away and mounting his horse. Without taking the hat held out to him by Major Sturgis, he addressed the Iowans he was to command with, “Forward men, I will lead you.” Two minutes afterward, he lay dead on the field, killed by a rifle ball through the breast, just above the heart. 48 Harper’s focus on the general’s mental state affects the audience’s imaginative understanding of his death. Lyon’s somber, uncertain mood is reminiscent of 19 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 Christ’s emotional anguish before the Passion. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus verbalizes his agony during his nighttime visit to the Garden of Gethsemane, asking God to “remove this cup from me,” his sweat dripping like “great drops of blood falling to the ground.” Yet, gradually, Jesus comes to embrace his destiny. Likewise (according to the report), Lyon suffered mentally and physically before accepting the fate he had foreseen. Before his death, the general’s bloody hat, like a modern-day crown of thorns, presages his martyrdom.49 Oddly, Lyon’s hat-waving gesture, while depicted on the Harper’s cover, is not described in that paper’s account of the general’s death. Yet the Harper’s cover, together with the magazine's account of the battle, reinforce the concept of the general as a redemptive figure, sacrificing his blood and body for the Union. This concept was reinforced by numerous cultural forces in the summer of 1861, reflecting the collective need of the Northern populace for martyred heroes to validate their cause. In the Harper’s text, Lyon’s hat is a material manifestation of the general’s sacrifice and a tangible omen of his fate. Moreover, the hat pictured on the cover became doubly significant in context with the newspaper's text. Harper’s audience would likely visualize the hat as an inspirational sign of Lyon’s commitment to the Union, and as a blood-soaked memorial to his ultimate sacrifice.50 In the summer of 1861, the treatment of Lyon’s hat as a relic bolstered the general’s status as a secular martyr and quasi-saint. Displayed on his coffin as his body lay in state in cities across the nation, Lyon’s hat eventually lay at the head of the general’s coffin during his August 5, 1861 funeral. Weeks later, the family presented the “chapeau” to the state of Connecticut so that it could be shared and preserved in perpetuity.51 The hat’s continued cultural significance is reflected in its survival to this day in the collection of the Connecticut Historical Society. (fig. 30). (fig. 30, photo courtesy of the Connecticut Historical Society) In conclusion, historians have long overlooked the role newspaper illustrations played in the construction of historical memory during the Civil War era. This case study of journalistic images associated with the Battle of Wilson’s Creek reveals that these wood engravings were loaded with religious and historical allusions to Americans' shared visual and literary heritage. Few nineteenth-century Americans experienced the Battle of Wilson’s Creek firsthand, yet the illustrated newspapers published a series of images that allowed a nation to imaginatively “witness” the soldiers’ sacrifice and Lyon’s heroic charge. Art historian William J. Ivins describes the power of such visual reportage, asserting that we “think and act upon” symbolic reports rather than concrete historical events. The Wilson’s Creek newspaper illustrations shaped the way Lyon’s death was understood and remembered by the nation in 1861. The images 20 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 characterized the battle as a pivotal fight for the West and helped reinforce a heroic, savior-like persona for Lyon that helped inspire Unionists to fight (metaphorically and literally) for the national cause. This paper was read at the Mid-America Conference on History, Springfield, Missouri, Sept. 21, 2012. The bibliography on the battle of Wilson’s Creek is extensive and cannot be wholly documented here. For a basic analysis, overview, and bibliography related to the battle, see William Piston and Richard Hatcher, Wilson's Creek: The Second Battle of the Civil War and the Men Who Fought It (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000) and Christopher Phillips, The Battle of Wilson’s Creek (Fort Washington, Pennsylvania: Eastern National), 2008. 1 http://www.nytimes.com/1861/08/14/news/another-battle-missouridefeat-rebel-troops-official-announcement-battlefull.html?pagewanted=all, accessed Feb. 10, 2012. See Major S. D. Sturgis’s Official Report from the Army of the West Headquarters near Rolla, Missouri, August 20, 1861, The War of the Rebellion, p. 67. 4 5 Estimated casualties at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek were 1,235 for the Union and 1,095 for the combined rebel forces of the Missouri State Guard and the Confederacy. Federal casualties were reported by Major Samuel Sturgis, on August 20, 1861, in official military reports republished in The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series 1, (Washington: Govt. Print. Off., 1881), vol. 3, part 1, p. 67. On page 106 of the same text, the casualties of the rebels are reported by General Ben McCulloch in his official August 12, 1861, account of the battle. The War of the Rebellion is published online: http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/sources/recordView.cfm?Content=003/0067, accessed April 10, 2012. This source will hereafter be abbreviated OR. 2 3 As early as Wednesday, August 14, 1861, The New York Times published this early, unofficial (and not entirely accurate) report of the death of General Nathaniel Lyon: Early on Saturday morning Gen. Lyon marched out of Springfield to give battle to the enemy. . . . Sometime in the afternoon, as [he] was leading on his column his horse was shot from under him. He immediately mounted another, and as he turned around to his men, waving his hat in his hand and cheering them on to victory, he was struck in the small of the back by a ball and fell dead to the ground .” See “Another Battle in Missouri: Defeat of the Rebel Troops. Official Announcement of the Battle. Full Details of the Battle. Sketch of Gen. Lyon. News of the Rebellion.” New York Times, Aug. 14, 1861: The publishing industry was much stronger in the North than in the South, even before the war. The South’s few presses, limited paper production, and expensive mail service hampered the circulation of newspapers. In August of 1861, no Southern illustrated newspaper existed to represent the battle of Wilson’s Creek (or Oak Hills, as the rebels called it). The Southern Illustrated News, launched in Richmond in the fall of 1862 (its final issue published on Sept. 13 1862 and its last issue published on March 25, 1865), never had a large circulation or staff. Most editions included only a few wood engravings, which rarely exhibited the variety or quality characteristic of the Northern illustrated papers. For The Southern Illustrated News, see Mark E. Neely, Harold Holtzer, Gabor S. Boritt, The Confederate Image: Prints of the Lost Cause (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2000), pp. 23-30. For subscription rates and a discussion of the importance of illustrated newspapers in the Civil War era, see A. G. Pearson, “Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper and Harper's Weekly: Innovation and Imitation in Nineteenth‐Century American Pictorial Reporting,” The Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 24, no. 4 (Spring, 1990): 81-111. See also Joshua Brown, Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America, (2002), especially pp. 46-59; William Fletcher Thompson, The Image of War: The Pictorial Reporting of the American Civil War (University of Louisville Press, 1996); and James M. Volo and Dorothy Denneen Volo (editors), The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Daily Life in America, Volume 4: The Civil War, Reconstruction and Industrialization 6 21 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 1861-1900, series editor, Randall M. Miller (Newport, Connecticut: The Greenwood Publishing Group, 2009), 97-100. See Dr. L. S. Thompson The Story of Mattie J. Jackson . . .A True Story Written and Arranged by Dr. L. S. Thompson as Given by Mattie, (Lawrence, Kansas: Sentinel Office, 1866), pp. 13-14. 7 Thomas Nast published several large illustrations for Harper’s Weekly during the Civil War period that were constructed like multipaneled altarpieces. See, for example, Christmas 1863, published Dec. 26, 1863, pp. 824-825.,New Year’s Day 1864, published Jan. 2, 1864, pp.8-9; Palm Sunday, published May 20, 1865, pp 312-313. 8 a tangentially related discussion of the political role of newspaper illustrations in journalism’s post-Civil War history, see Thomas C. Leonard’s The Power of the Press: The Birth of American Political Reporting (Oxford: Oxford University, 1986), especially pp. 63-132. For this quote see Alfred Hudson Guernsey and Henry Mills Alden, Harper’s Pictorial History of the Great Rebellion (Chicago: McDonnell Brothers, 1866), ii. The book reprinted many of the HW’s original articles and illustrations related to the Civil War. For the concept of objectivity in newspaper illustration, see Brown, Behind the Lines. Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America, pp.54-55 and 71. 12 The appellation “The First Living Room War,” was applied to the Civil War in Jan Zita Grover’s “The First Living-Room War: The Civil War in the Illustrated Press,” Afterimage (February, 1984): 8-11. Henry Lovie, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated News, May 17, 1862, cited in Campbell, The Civil War: A Centennial Exhibition of Eyewitness Drawings, pp.86-88. Hereafter, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated News will be abbreviated FLIN. For this illustration see Harper’s Weekly (April 30, 1864): 280-281. Harper’s Weekly will hereafter be abbreviated HW. For a reproduction of The Press in the Field and a discussion of the print as it relates to Thomas Nast’s role as a HW artist, see Applewood Books, An Album of Battle Art (Washington: Library of Congress: 1988), pp. 62-63. For a discussion of the nature of audiences that consumed newspaper wood engravings and the means by which papers were distributed, see Brown, Behind the Lines, 4950. The nineteenth-century artist George Caleb Bingham described the practice of copying masters as a means of learning the artistic trade in a June 3, 1838 letter: “I have been purchasing a lot of drawings and engravings, and also a lot of casts from antique sculptures which will give me nearly the same advantages in my drawing studies at home that are present to be enjoyed here.” See George Caleb Bingham in “But I Forget that I am a Painter and not a Politician: The Letters of George Caleb Bingham,” (Columbia: The State Historical Society of Missouri and the Friends of Arrow Rock Inc., 2011), p. 47. 9 13 14 10 See George Rable, God’s Almost Chosen People: A Religious History of the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), p.74. 15 11 The previously cited book by Joshua Brown, Behind the Lines, contains extensive discussion of Civil War newspaper images as cultural artifacts. However, most scholars use the wood engravings to illustrate wartime events without discussing their inherently subjective nature. Scholarship on these artworks tends to focus on their creation rather than reception, with an emphasis on the artists’ methods and experiences. For such artistfocused discussions, see Harry Katz and Vincent Virga, Civil War Sketch Book: Drawings From the Battlefront, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012), Witness to the Civil War: first-hand accounts from FLIN, compiled by J.G. Lewin and P.J. Huff; ed. by Stuart A.P. Murray (New York: Collins, 2006); Frederick E. Ray, Alfred Waud, Civil War Artist (New York: Viking Press, 1974), and William P. Campbell, The Civil War: A Centennial Exhibition of Eyewitness Drawings (Washington D. C.: The National Gallery of Art, 1961). A recent study of the topic, First Hand Civil War Drawings from the Becker Collection, eds. Judith Bookbinder and Sheila Gallagher (Boston: McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 2010) provide some discussion of the reception of published wood engravings, but as an exhibition catalog, in-depth analysis is limited. For Kristen Schwain, Signs of Grace: Religion and American Art in the Gilded Age (New York: Cornell University Press, 2008), p.2. 16 See Acts 9:3-6 (King James translation), “And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutes thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutes: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he, trembling and astonished, said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.” 17 22 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 For Murillo’s painting, see Charles Boyd Curtis, Velazquez and Murillo: a Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Works of Don Diego de Silva Velazquez and Bartolomé Estéban Murillo, (New York: J. W. Bouton, 1908), p. 262. Murillo was likely aware of the ca. 1820s tapestry of the subject designed by Raphael Sanzio that hangs in the Vatican. Engravings after Raphael’s composition, reproduced in numerous engravings, may have also influenced the Frank Leslie’s artist. Other images of St. Paul’s conversion that could have influenced the artist include Peter Paul Rubens’ painting of the subject (ca. 1616, formerly Keiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, destroyed in 1945); the sixteenth-century Conversion of St. Paul by Francesco Salviati in the Galleria Doria Pamphili, Rome; and Ludovico Caracci’s, ca. 1589 picture in the, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna 17 Rev. I. B. Watkins, Tallis’s Illustrated Scripture History for the improvement of youth (New York and London: John Tallis and Company), 1851. For a recent discussion of Paul’s Christ-like gesture in Caravaggio’s painting, Andrew Graham-Dixon, Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane, (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2011), pp. 214-217. 19 See “Printed Treason,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (August 24, 1861), p. 226. 20 Pre-Wilson’s Creek biographies of Lyon appeared in HW (July 13, 1861): 444 and FLIN (Aug. 10, 1861): 199. 21 The Death of General Wolfe challenged this tradition, see Inèn E. Annus, “Seeing Pain: The Visual Representation of Pain in American Painting,” in Feeling in Others: Essays on Empathy and Suffering in Modern American Culture, eds. Nieves Pascual and Antonio Ballesteros González (Vienna: LIT Verlag Münster, 2008), pp. 101-115. Annus argues that before The Death of General Wolfe, pain was considered unheroic and inappropriate for publicly consumed artworks. West imbued Wolfe’s pain with a theatrical spirituality that made it acceptable. Contemporary costumes and site-specific details gave The Death of General Wolfe the air of authenticity, although emotive credibility rather than accuracy was West’s goal. “Wolfe must not die like a common soldier,” he later claimed, “all should be proportioned to the highest idea conceived of the hero.” For this quote, see The Diary of Joseph Farrington, ed. Katherine Cave, vol. 8 (New Haven: Yale University Press), 3,064. West made multiple copies of the painting and profited from the lucrative sale of approximately 10,000 impressions of William Woollett’s engraved version published by John Boydell in 1775. See Alan McNairn, Behold the Hero: General Wolfe and the Arts in the Eighteenth Century, p. 165-167. Among the many works that may have influenced West, a direct precedent may be a dry point by Annibale Carracci known as the Capranola Pietà (fig. 10). For discussion and bibliography related to the complexities of the Christian allusions in The Death of General Wolfe, see Ronald Paulson, Hogarth’s Harlot: Sacred Parody in Enlightenment England (John Hopkins University Press, 2003), 130-132. 25 For a discussion of the widespread influence of The Death of General Wolfe, see McNairn, pp. 144-164. 26 For the posthumous display of Lyon’s body and his subsequent funeral, see Ashbel Woodward, Life of General Nathaniel Lyon ( Hartford, Connecticut: Case Lockwood & Co., 1862), pp. 338-345 and “The Reception of General Lyon’s Body in New York,” FLIN (Sept. 7, 1861): 263. 23 For West’s Death of General Wolfe, its history, precedents, influence, and bibliography, see Alan McNairn, Behold the Hero: General Wolfe and the Arts in the Eighteenth Century (Montreal: McGill-Queens, 1997). 22 Trumbull partnered with Antonio di Poggi to distribute the print, The Death of General Warren at Bunker Hill, engraved by Stuttgart printmaker Johann Gotthard von Müller in 1797. For this engraving, see Theodore Sizer’s The Works of Colonel John Trumbull (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), p. 95. 27 28 24 For a historical overview of battle images in Western art, see Peter Paret, Imagined Battles, Reflections of War in European Art (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), David Perlmutter, Visions of War: Picturing Warfare from the Stone Age to the Cyber Age (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), and Artful Armies, Beautiful Battles: Art and Warfare in Early Modern Europe, ed. Pia Cuneo (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill, 2002). Before the second half of the eighteenth century, images of heroes in pain or heroic military death were few. For a discussion of how The political associations between the concept of Christian atonement, secession, and slavery reappear repeatedly in the popular culture of the Civil War era. Before the war, John Brown encouraged such associations with his last written words, “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.” The redemptive power of Brown’s posthumous “resurrected” self is articulated in the famous Civil War song “John Brown’s Body” (according to the song, Brown’s body is “moldering in his grave” while his soul “marches on,” 23 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 inspiring Union soldiers). For a discussion of these issues, see Franny Nudelman, John Brown’s Body: Slavery Violence and the Culture of War, (University of North Carolina Press, 2004), especially pages 9-39. Lincoln famously reiterated the war-as-atonement theme in his second inaugural, suggesting that the war might not end “until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.”’ For this speech, its allusions, and bibliography, see Ronald White’s Lincoln’s Greatest Speech (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), pp. 17-19. For a discussion of the political and religious use of atonement rhetoric, see George Rable, Gods Almost Chosen People: A Religious History of the American Civil War and Ernest Bormann, “Fetching Good out of Evil: A Rhetorical Use of Calamity,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 63 (1977): 130139. See “Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer. Proclamation by the President,” FLIN (Sept. 7, 1861): 263. The official practice of setting aside of a day to atone for the sins of a nation has a long history and continues to this day. For a discussion of the practice see William A. Callahan, “War, Shame, and Time: Pastoral Governance and National Identity in England and America,” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 50, no. 2 (2006): 395 –419. 29 “The Battle of Wilson’s Creek,” FLIN (August. 31, 1861): 258. The pages of this issue are not numbered sequentially. The article on Wilson’s Creek appears on the first page of printed text. 30 This argument is made in William Fletcher Thompson’s, The Image of War: The Pictorial Reporting of the American Civil War (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1959), pp. 60-61. Thompson illustrates his point that early war images tended to present “heroic” visions while later examples focused on war’s carnage with the August 31, 1861, image from FLIN showing General Lyon waving his hat as he rides into battle at Wilson’s Creek. Ironically, the less famous centerfold representing the carnage of the Battle of Wilson’s Creek appears in the same issue of the paper. When seen together, the heroic and the somber images of Wilson’s Creek present a more nuanced vision of the battle. It is also worth noting that even the most heroic images representing the Battle of Wilson’s Creek include dead and wounded bodies. 31 33 See New York Illustrated News, vol. 4, no. 95 (Aug. 26, 1861), 257, 260, 264- 265 (the New York Illustrated News will hereafter be abbreviated, NYIN. Two related images were also published in the paper, “The Fourth Regiment Iowa Volunteers Crossing the Prairie en Route to Join Gen. Lyon in Missouri,” p. 268 and Ben McCulloch, the Rebel General Commanding the Traitors in Southern Missouri,” p. 256. The page numbers are out of sequence and page 256 is the back page of the issue, 33 New York Illustrated News vol. 4, no. 95 (Aug. 26, 1861), 266. 34 Ibid. See “Battle of Wilson’s Creek, Mo., Aug. 10, 1861. Gen. Lyon Leading into Action the Iowa Regiment, whose Colonel had been disabled.” NYIN, vol. 4, no. 95 (Aug. 26, 1861), 264- 265. Although the caption records that the initial drawing was sketched by J. S. Scheibel, the illustration is clearly signed in the left-hand corner “Th. Nast.” Thomas Nast was working for the NYIN in 1861, before joining HW in 1862. Scheibel is acknowledged as the originator of the composition on page 258, “We tender our thanks to Mr. J. S. Scheibel for his promptness on forwarding the spirited sketch taken on the spot of the battle of Wilson’s Creek Missouri. . . .” The likelihood that Scheibel’s sketch was rather amateur and unfinished is suggested in the solicitation on the same page: “Any one in any part of the country who will send us faithful sketches of scenes and incidents connected with the war, however roughly they may be drawn, will be heartily thanked by the proprietors of this paper. If the sketches be used, they will be liberally paid for.” 35 36 Commissioned by Napoleon as propaganda, Napoleon Haranguing the Troops at the Battle of the Pyramids is now housed in the palace of Versailles, Versailles, France. For Gros’ picture see David O’Brien, After the Revolution: Antoine-Jean Gros. Painting and Propaganda Under Napoleon (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 97 and 144-146. See also Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby in Extremities: Painting Empire in Post-Revolutionary France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 137, 141-142. Engravings truncated vertical version of the image made into a mezzotint by T. W. Huffam, and published in England in 1841 by I. W. Laird, as well as one published in France in 1838 by Philippe Joseph Auguste Vallot. A medal inspired by the image by Antoine Bovy was minted ca. 1840. For the relationship of Gros’ Napoleonic battle pictures to Imperial Roman reliefs, see John Walker McCoubrey, “Gros' Battle of Eylau and Roman Imperial Art,” The Art Bulletin, vol. 43, no. 2 (Jun., 1961), pp. 135-139. For a discussion of later examples of Nast’s allusions to French art, see Albert Boime, “Thomas Nast and French Art,” American Art Journal, vol. 4, no. 1 (Spring, 1972), pp. 43-65 37 38 NYIN vol. 4, no. 95 (Aug. 26, 1861), p. 260 (illustration), p. 266 (text) 24 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 For a discussion of newspaper illustrations’ relationship to theater, see Brown, Behind the Lines, p. 72. 42 For Brown’s statue, installed in 1856, see Karen Lemmey, Henry Kirke Brown and the Development of American Public Sculpture in New York City 1846-1876, (diss. New York City University, 2005). The horse’s head in the Harper’s cover is especially reminiscent of the New York monument. 39 See “The Battle at Wilson’s Creek” FLIN (Aug. 31, 1861): 242 (misprinted as page 258 in the copy examined). 43 44 See HW “The Battle of Springfield,” (Aug. 31, 1861): 549. For the clothing worn by the Confederate soldiers during the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, see William Piston, “The Battle of Wilson’s Creek and the Struggle for Missouri,” American Battlefield Trust Website, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/battle-wilsons-creek-and-struggle-missouri accessed, June 13, 2024. 45 Clark Mills’ 1853 statue of Andrew Jackson on horseback was commissioned by Congress for Lafayette Park across from the White House. Mills made a second casting for Jackson Square in New Orleans in 1856. The pro-Union inscription, OUR FEDERAL UNION / IT/ MUST BE PRESERVED was on the north side of its base throughout the nineteenth century. The text paraphrased words spoken by Jackson in 1830 during a toast made during a celebration of Thomas Jefferson’s birthday. The pro-Union words were moved to the less conspicuous west side of the statue’s base in 1909. In 1862, General Benjamin Butler had, “THE UNION MUST /AND/ SHALL BE PRESERVED” engraved on the stone pedestal of the New Orleans statue. See James M. Goode, “Four Salutes to the Nation: The Equestrian Statues of Andrew Jackson,” White House History 27 (2010), 1-18. Clark Mills’ equestrian portrait of George Washington was installed in Washington Circle, Washington D. C. in 1860. For the inauguration of this statue, see Thomas S. Bocock, Inauguration of Mills' equestrian statue of Washington (Washington D. C.: W.H. and O. H. Morrison, 1860). A third equestrian sculpture of Washington was in Confederate territory: Thomas Crawford’s 1858 bronze equestrian statue of Washington in front of the capitol in Richmond Virginia. See Lauretta Dimmick, "An Altar Erected to Heroic Virtue Itself: Thomas Crawford and His Virginia Washington Monument," American Art Journal 23, no. 2 (1991): 4-73. 40 A reporter for the New York Daily Tribune wrote on August 18, 1861, “The intelligence from Missouri of the death of the chivalric Lyon, will cast sadness over the land not unlike that which filled the heart of our Hero age when the young, talented and brave fell fighting for the country. So passed on to an immortal crown, one of the noblest of men of the maternal family of Lyon, Thomas Knowlton, by whose command the men of Connecticut took a key position in the Bunker Hill Battle . . . as subsequently he fought and died under the eye of Washington at Harlem Heights.” New York Daily Tribune (August 18, 1861): 6. Accessed March 16, 2012, via the Library of Congress’s “Chronicling America” website: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov. Lyon’s connection with Knowlton was also publicized before his death, appearing in biographies in the HW, (July 13, 1861): 444 and FLIN (Aug. 10, 1861): 199. 41 46 See HW (July 13, 1861): 444. In an August 14 story, the New York Times quotes Colonel E. D. Townsend report stating that the enemy’s captured muster rolls included “Cherokee half-breeds.” See “Another Battle in Missouri: Defeat of the Rebel Troops. Official Announcement of the Battle. Full Details of the Battle. Sketch of Gen. Lyon. News of the Rebellion.” New York Times, August 14, 1861. http://www.nytimes.com/1861/08/14/news/anotherbattle-missouri-defeat-rebel-troops-official-announcement-battlefull.html?pagewanted=all accessed Feb. 10, 2012. FLIN also mentioned Indians with General Benjamin McCullough’s forces, arguing that the Native American presence reflected “Southern Barbarism.” See “Southern Barbarism: Employment of Savages in War,” FLIN (Sept. 14, 1861): 274. The article cites a report from the Helena (Arkansas) Shield, August 10, 1861, “we learn that on last Monday week, thirteen hundred Indian warriors–Southern allies-crossed the Arkansas river, near Fort Smith, on the way for McCullough’s camp. These Indians were armed with rifle, butcher knife and tomahawk, and had their faces painted one half red and the other black.” The use of Indigenous people as symbols of the “Westerness” of the Battle of Wilson’s Creek reappears later in Herman Melville’s poem, “Lyon: Battle of Springfield, Missouri,” in Battle-Pieces and Aspects of War (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1866), pp. 24-27. In the poem, Melville refers to “Texans and Indians trim for a charge,” and writes “On they came: they yelped and fired/ His spirit sped;/We leveled right in, and the half-breeds fled. . . .” 47 “The Battle of Springfield,” HW, p. 549. The passage quoted is credited to a correspondent for The Herald. 48 The complete passage from the King James translation of Luke 22: 3944 reads, “And he came out, and went, as he was wont, to the mount of Olives; and his disciples also followed him. And when he was at the place, 49 25 Mid-America Conference on History, 2012 he said unto them, Pray that ye enter not into temptation. And he was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and kneeled down, and prayed, Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done. And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling to the ground.” The aforementioned poem by Herman Melville, “Lyon: Battle of Springfield,” also suggests Lyon foresaw his fate: “This seer foresaw his soldier-doom,/ Yet willed the fight./ He never turned, his only flight/ Was up to Zion,/Where prophets now and armies greet brave Lyon.” See Melville, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of War (New York: Harper & 50 Brothers, 1866), pp. 24-27. For the nineteenth-century concept of the Civil War as a war of atonement, see note 27. See “The Reception of General Lyon’s Body in New York,” FLIN (Sept. 7, 1861): 263, “The burial case was bedecked with the American flag. At the head lay the chapeau of the late general in the centre a wreath of evergreens and immortelles and at the feet the sword which was grasped in General Lyon's hand while leading his gallant troops.” For the display of the hat at the funeral, see Ashbel Woodward, Life of General Nathaniel Lyon (Hartford, Connecticut: Case Lockwood & Co., 1862), p. 342, “Upon the coffin were placed the hat which he waved aloft when rallying his brave but shattered ranks to smite the rebel host on the field of Wilson's Creek . . .” Woodward also documents the gift of the hat to the state and its preservation in the Conneticut Historical Society in Appendix B, 357. 51 26