- CountryUS
- Town:Washington D.C.
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Year of creation:1920
- Rider(s):Grant, Ulysses S.
(1822–1885) is the big hero of the Civil War. As a general, he fought a series of battles and was promoted to the rank of major general after forcing the surrender of a large Confederate army. After a number of successful battles, during which Grant earned a reputation as an aggressive commander, Lincoln made him commander of all of the Union Armies in 1863. As general-in-chief, Grant confronted Lee in a series of very high casualty battles in 1864 that ended by bottling up Lee at Petersburg, outside the Confederate capital of Richmond captured by the Union Army in April 1865. Lee surrendered his depleted forces to Grant. As the eighteenth President of the US (1869–1877), Grant led the Radical Republicans in their effort to eliminate all vestiges of Confederate nationalism and slavery; he effectively destroyed the Ku Klux Klan in 1871.
- Sculptor(s):Shrady, Henry Merwin
(1871 –1922) was an American sculptor, best known for this Grant memorial. In the twenty years Shrady spent executing its sculpture program, he studied biology at the American Museum of Natural History and dissected horses to gain a better understanding of animal anatomy.
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The most impressive statue of him forms part of the Grant memorial Washington DC, west of Capitol Hill. Henry Merwin Shrady was the winner of the competition, during which 27 designs were submitted. Shrady worked for 20 years on the memorial and died, stressed and overworked, two weeks before its dedication in 1922 on the 100th anniversary of Grant’s birth.
The monument consists of an artillery and a cavalry group – including a fallen rider, modelled on Shrady himself, moments from being trampled by the onrushing horses – four bronze lions and a tall equestrian statue of Grant. A striking feature of this statue is Grant’s calm attitude amidst the dramatic fighting scenes around him. Grant was known for his calmness and cool headedness during battle. The monument is one of the biggest in the US. All together it is a memorial not only to Grant, but also to the troops he commanded.
