On September 17, 1877, the Civil War Army + Navy Monument Was Unveiled on Boston Common to 100,000 Spectators

One hundred and forty-five years ago today, public officials, military leaders and the people of Boston unveiled the Army & Navy Monument at Flagstaff Hill on Boston Common to commemorate Massachusetts men and women who gave their lives during the Civil War.  

More than 100,000 spectators lined the streets of Boston as 25,429 veterans marched along a 6 1/2 mile route through the city and up to Flagstaff Hill. Among the marchers was Peter Nolan of Post 75 G.A.R, "who marched the entire route on crutches, having lost a leg at the second battle of Bull Run," according to the program notes. 

"All nationalities, all colors and conditions of men were represented," reported the New York Times.  "The Irish, Scotch, English, Portuguese and others were out in large numbers and carried the blood-stained flags under which they fought.  The colored men also turned out in large numbers and stepped as proudly to the strains of martial music as the men who had so enthusiastically take up the case which led to their freedom." 

The memorial was created by Martin Milmore, an Irish immigrant who moved to Boston from County Sligo with his widowed mother and three brothers in 1851.  He showed early signs of artistic genius as a student at the BrimmerElementary School and Boston Latin, and got an apprenticeship with noted sculptor Thomas Ball by offering to sweep the floors of the studio every night. 

The monument project was initially conceived after the Civil War, in 1866, as a memorial to "fallen heroes who...aided in putting down the Southern Rebellion and in sustaining the Constitution of our Country and the Union of the States," according to the official program. 

"The deeds of our heroes, whom we proposed to honor, caused the chain to fall from 4 million of the human race.... And not only did they aid in restoring to liberty those upon whom the brand of servitude had been stamped for years, but they emancipated our own Southern brethren from the customs of the past, and placed them in new relations to humanity and progress, where they will enjoy a freedom never before known to them."

Milmore was awarded the commission in 1870, and the cornerstone was laid on September 18, 1871.  The following year Milmore moved to Rome, Italy for five years, modeling his design in a setting of artistic inspiration.

Part of Milmore's genius was to depict the figures of navy and army not as admirals and generals but as ordinary sailors and soldiers.  This was an artistic perspective he had taken in his earlier Civil War works, including memorials in Roxbury, Charlestown and Framingham, MA, Claremont, NH, Waterville, ME and Eire, PA.

According to published specifications, the granite column is seventy feet, and has the shape of a square fort with bastions.  Four bronze figures, eight feet in height, represent peace, history, army and navy.  Atop the column is a bronze statue, eleven feet in height, representing the Genius of America.  

The Genius of America "represents a woman, majestically proportioned, clad in a flowing robe...upon her head is a crown of 13 stars.  The head is slightly bowed, and the eyes cast down.  There is nothing of haughtiness nor defiance in attitude or expression.  The figure does not symbolize America the conqueror, proud in her strength and defiant of her foes; but rather America the mourner, paying proud tribute to her loyal dead, whose bones lie upon every battlefield of the great South, toward which her face is turned." 

Mayor Frederick O. Prince said, “If the commemorated dead could arise and speak to those they have met in battle, their words would not be words of anger, but of peace and good-will.  Why then, should it not be otherwise with the living?

“The genius of the artist has with great felicity placed the statue of Peace looking to the South,” Prince continued.  “Let us hope that…it is an assurance that the past is forgotten; that there are to be no irritating or disturbing memories; that the South, when it looks to the North, shall see not the sword of victory, but the fraternal hand grasping the olive-branch of reconciliation and friendship.”

In a further sign of reconciliation, Confederate officers were invited to attend the ceremony, joining Union Generals Joseph Hooker and George B. McClellan. 

Charlestown native Charles Devens, a Union General and Massachusetts judge, was orator of the day.  He also characterized the monument as a gesture of peace, not war. 

“The monument bears no words of boasting or unseemly exaltation, and the assertion of the justice of their cause, though firmly made, is yet not made in any harsh or controversial spirit,” Devens said.  

“Let us endeavor to lift ourselves to a higher level of patriotism which despises any narrow sectionalism, and rejoices in the nationality broad enough to embrace every section of the Union, and each one of its people, whether high or humble, rich or poor, black or white.”

Milmore died on July 21, 1883 in Roxbury, at age 39, and is buried at Forest Hills Cemetery with his brothers in Jamaica Plain.   Sculptor Daniel French did the artwork for the Milmore monument, which he entitled "The Angel of Death and the Sculptor." 

To learn more about Boston's illustrious Irish history and heritage dating back to the 18th century, visit IrishHeritageTrail.com. 

- Essay by Michael Quinlin

The Army Navy Monument, also called the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial, is on Boston's Irish Heritage Trail.  Read more about Irish immigrant sculptors.