Services of the Union in the Civil War (Infantry)

A procession of infantrymen commemorates the largest contingent of the Union Army: common foot soldiers marching and fighting without aid of a seated mount.  The Civil War armies, both Union and Confederate, relied heavily on sheer numbers for effectiveness.  This bas-relief is intended to convey the spirit of restless, vigorous, and unending movement of the masses.  Although evocative of a formal military procession with its lines of marching soldiers, the artist made a conscious decision to depict the infantrymen in fighting uniform instead of parade dress.

Constructed between 1882 and 1887, the Pension Building provided much needed space for the U.S. Pension Bureau following the Civil War.  Supervising architect-engineer General Montgomery Meigs envisioned a building adorned with a classically inspired monumental frieze, depicting the men who served, suffered, and sacrificed on behalf of the Union in the Civil War.  In order to make this enormous frieze economically feasible, Meigs commissioned artist Caspar Buberl to carve six interchangeable panels, which were then duplicated by the Boston Terra Cotta Company to wrap the 1,200 foot long facade.  The plaster casts seen here were taken from Buberl’s original sculpted clay panels, and were utilized during construction as the benchmarks against which to check the many terra cotta copies arriving on site.