The American Volunteer (statue)

Planning

The cornerstone of the monument was laid on September 17, 1867, the fifth anniversary of the battle, during the dedication of Antietam National Cemetery. President Andrew Johnson, Supreme Court justices, members of Congress, and generals Grant, McClellan, Burnside, and Admiral Porter attended. The night before, the cemetery board approved the design: a colossal soldier in overcoat, half-cape, and kepi, holding his rifle at parade rest. No record of the design-selection process has come to hand.

Execution

Granite for the statue came from the Rhode Island Granite Works in Westerly, Rhode Island, where it was carved by a team led by James W. Pollette. The statue was made in two pieces, with the soldier's belt hiding the joint; a tree stump at the back adds stability. Conrads posed the figure at parade rest, an informal stance unusual for its time. Martin Milmore had earlier used a parade-rest pose for his Roxbury Soldiers' Monument, but that soldier looks downward. Conrads's soldier is alert and surveys the horizon. The pose became common for Civil War monuments after the statue's popularity. Conrads appears to have reused the model for soldiers atop monuments in Portland, Meriden, and Wolcottville, Connecticut. O. Langworthy & Company photographed the statue at the works before it shipped to Philadelphia.

Centennial Exposition

The statue likely arrived at the Centennial fairgrounds by railroad from the Schuylkill River docks, in two pieces. It was erected on a 15-foot granite pedestal in front of the Main Exhibition Building's north entrance, on the Avenue of the Republic opposite the Art Gallery. President Grant faced the statue when he opened the Exposition on May 10, 1876. More than 10 million people visited, and nearly all would have seen it; millions more saw it in illustrations and photographs.

Although formally named 'The American Soldier,' it became popularly known as 'The American Volunteer,' possibly due to a widely distributed stereoscopic view with that caption. One critic described the figure as a 'ponderous Antietam Soldier,' noting its height of twenty-one feet six inches, its alert pose with hands clasped around the gun barrel, and its masculine chin and moustache. The critic remarked that the sculptor achieved the work in months, unlike ancient Egyptian sculptors who labored for years.

Antietam

Getting the statue to its final home was not easy. While being unloaded in Washington, D.C., the soldier’s upper half tumbled into the Potomac River. After that mishap, a canal barge carried it to Sharpsburg, where workers moved it on rollers to the National Cemetery. There it was placed on a new, taller pedestal designed by architect George Keller. The monument was dedicated on September 17, 1880, exactly eighteen years after the battle. George Hess, the cemetery’s first superintendent, wrote in 1890 that the colossal soldier stands guard over the loyal dead, bearing the inscription: “Not for Themselves, but for Their Country, September 17, 1862.”