U.S. Grant
R.E. Lee
1931
Cartaino S. Paolo (1881-1955)
Bronze
Gift of Robert and Alma Watchorn
As part of his interior décor strategy for the Lincoln Memorial Shrine, architect Elmer Grey envisioned busts of General Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee looking toward the central bust of Abraham Lincoln in a sign of national unity and reconciliation. The placement of Grant and Lee on equal terms is in line with the Lost Cause, an ideology which justified the southern states’ failed rebellion, defended the enslavement of millions of people, and created idols out of the figures most associated with the insurrection, Robert E. Lee chief among them. Proponents disseminated that interpretation of the war widely by the 1930s, and that legacy has dominated American memory of the conflict for generations.
In the decades after the Civil War, Lost Cause propaganda elevated Robert E. Lee to the status of a national hero. While President Abraham Lincoln saw southern leaders as insurgents who led armies in rebellion against the United States, after the war, Lee became a martyr for what was portrayed as the South’s supposedly noble fight for independence. Already a popular figure among southerners during the war, Lee, along with other leaders, became memorialized in monuments, schools, and place names across the country, in addition to books, films, and music that shaped generations of Americans’ perceptions of the war and his role in the conflict. As representatives of the defense of white supremacy in the United States, Lee and other Southern figures from the Civil War have gained widespread recognition as emblems of the nation’s racial trauma and their place in American history is being reassessed.
About the Artist…
Cartaino S. Paolo was an internationally known sculptor and painter from Palermo, Sicily. He arrived in the United States in 1911 and maintained studios in New York and Boston, where he worked in terra cotta, marble, stone, and granite. He paid close attention to detail and created figures resembling the style of the classical Italian Renaissance. These busts of General Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee were commissioned for the Lincoln Memorial Shrine by the museum’s founders Robert and Alma Watchorn in 1931.
