Well, I'm out of the office for a few days. I hope to return with lots of photos of Confederate monuments, as well as tons of research that'll be useful for my paper on the jurisprudence of slavery and freedom in Washington College literary addresses. And so I thought that I'd follow up on my posts on lawyer and judge house trivia with a question about monument trivia.
What (and where) is the monument at right? I don't want to make this too easy, but I'll say that the monument dates to before the Civil War. That's right — it's not a monument to the Civil War, it's a monument before the Civil War. Though it occupied an important place in the war. And — and this is especially cool — one of my Lexington orators (actually two, now that I think about this) spoke at the dedication of the monument.
Well, if it's a statue of a white general, it's probably Richmond.
I feel like I've seen that, but that might be just because so many equine monuments look the same. That's one reason why I like this statue of Alexander III in Saint Petersburg- it's strikingly unusual.
http://www.saint-petersburg.com/monuments/alexander-3rd.asp
There's no pretending his horse is going to rear, for one thing.
I'll guess Henry Clay was one of the orators. Not sure of the statute.
Been away from the net for most of the day — sorry about this.
Steve's right on the location — it's Richmond.
And I'm guessing that Matt — and everyone else — has seen it before.
But I don't think Henry Clay is one of the subsidiary figures — I think they're all earlier than Clay (though Clay had passed away before the statue was placed). And I think they're all people we associate more with Virginia than Clay (it's true, of course, that he was born in Virginia, but by the time this statue was placed he was more associated in the popular mind with Kentucky).
This gets a little easier knowing it's Richmond. Is it the George Washington Equestrian Monument? http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=4715
Artistically, this looks like a real mess. In particular, that horse looks more like a shaky My Little Pony than a fearless war stallion.
Yes, Steve! It's the Washington Equestrian monument.
John Thompson, who was editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, delivered a poem at its dedication in 1858, and RMT Hunter gave an oration at the same time. If you're interested in either of them, they're on book.google:
http://books.google.com/books?id=aWwtAAAAYAAJ&dq=opening%20ode%201858%20hunter&pg=PP5#v=onepage&q&f=false