Pandemic Walks: Assessing Boston Civil War Narratives, Part II

by Kathleen Stone
June 23, 2021

Soldiers and Sailors Monument | Photo by the author

About a month after our walk in the Forest Hills Cemetery, my husband and I went to Boston Common. We've walked through the Common hundreds of times and used to sled down Flagstaff Hill with our son. This day though, we had time to walk up the hill and inspect the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, walking around it and admiring the bronze panels. When I noticed Martin Milmore's name, I realized that I was once again in thrall to his artwork.

The Soldiers and Sailors Monument is far more elaborate than Milmore's lone soldier in the Forest Hills Cemetery. Around the base are four mezzo-relievo panels that show Bostonians preparing for war. Above them on elevated platforms stand a mash-up of figures – two allegorical (Peace and the Muse of History) and two realistic (a soldier and a sailor). Towering 75 feet above them is a column topped by a female figure (America) full of iconography: a crown with thirteen stars, a flag, a sword, plus a laurel wreath. The monument spins a grand story, but to find out what 19th century Bostonians really intended it to say, I headed to the city archives.   

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