Rogers began work on this sculpture in September 1864, when war-weary Northerners were heartened by General William T. Sherman's capture of Atlanta. By the time Rogers released the group in November, Abraham Lincoln had been reelected by a wide margin, and Sherman's March to the Sea had devastated the South. Rogers' timing was excellent, and his choice of subject, the courage and tenacity of the Union soldier, proved very popular. His sales catalogue described how two wounded Union soldiers had been ordered to the rear during a battle, but one stopped to take one last shot at the enemy before leaving. The standing soldier's left arm is in a sling, and with his good arm he draws a cartridge from his pouch as he casts a flinty stare at the enemy. His comrade sits below, carefully binding up his injured leg. The subject was commonly known as One More Shot to distinguish it from Rogers' previous group Wounded Scout: A Friend in the Swamp (1936.655, 1928.31). In that work, an escaped slave guides an injured Union soldier who is almost fainting in his arms. By contrast, the wounded infantrymen in One More Shot are stalwart, and Rogers' depiction of the rank-and-file soldier's fighting spirit in the face of adversity earned the group lasting popularity. It remained in his sales catalogue until the end of his career, and it was a popular gift for veterans. In fact, it was one of two Rogers Groups that General George Custer took with him wherever he was assigned. Naturally, the subject was warmly praised for heroizing the Union soldier, but it also earned accolades for its artistic merits. A Brooklyn newspaper pointed out Rogers' success in integrating his storytelling details into a successful whole. The group even earned international acclaim for its originality. Rogers took a honeymoon trip to Europe in May 1865 and arranged for the display and sale of his groups in London. The London Times reported that his Civil War groups, One More Shot among them, "have the refreshing and unmistakable stamp of nationality upon them," and they represented "better work for the plastic artist than imitating [the] antique nudities [of the traditional Neoclassical style]." One More Shot was so admired that it was used as a commemorative gift, a kind of monument in miniature, for important Civil War figures after the fighting ended. Friends of William A. Buckingham commissioned a copy in bronze from Rogers to present to that wartime Connecticut governor (now in a private collection). In 1868 a plaster copy was given to General Joseph R. Hawley, then president of the Republican National Convention that nominated General Ulysses S. Grant for the presidency. Hawley declared, "Nothing relating to the war in painting or sculpture surpasses 'One Shot More.'"

This bronze served as the master model for the plasters that Rogers sold to a broad audience of middle-class Americans. Rogers earned his early fame from his Civil War subjects, and after the war ended he produced a few more sculptures that memorialized the Northern leaders of the conflict. As a monument to three key figures in the war, General Ulysses S. Grant, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, and the slain president Abraham Lincoln, The Council of War became one of Rogers' most resonant works. The idea for the group came from Stanton. Rogers asked for his advice through his wife's cousin, John H. Clifford of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Stanton wrote to Clifford describing one of the president's key councils of war in March 1864, immediately after Grant was given charge of all the Union armies. "Lieutenant General Grant[,] after returning from his first visit to the Army of the Potomac, laid before the President the plan of operations he proposed to adopt. This was at the War Department, and the group would embrace the three figures of the President, Secretary of War and General Grant. It would require no accessories but a roll or map in the hands of the General." Rogers' composition is very close to Stanton's suggestion except for the map, which, in the hands of the president rather than the secretary of war, makes Lincoln the central figure. The artist also added a scrolled paper, perhaps another map, curving behind Lincoln's feet, and he draped Lincoln's chair, perhaps to eliminate the distraction of its detailed surfaces. Rogers took great care in preparing to model the three likenesses, visiting Grant and Stanton and using photographs for reference. For the assassinated president he relied entirely on photographs. Rogers' oeuvre shows a mastery of portraiture that often goes unacknowledged, but here his talents were on full display and universally praised. Critical responses to the sculpture often noted with wonderment Rogers' great success in capturing likenesses of these three men, whose faces were as well known to the public as any man's was at the time. Some accounts noted the particular difficulty of rendering Lincoln, whose lanky, ungainly figure was a challenge for artists to realize in the heroic fashion appropriate to the man considered a martyr for the republic. Rogers was congratulated for not sacrificing accuracy for "elegance of form"; he was credited with giving the figure dignity but also an accurate sense of the man's physical presence through the awkward placement of his legs. The president's son Tad later wrote that his family considered The Council of War the most lifelike rendering of his father in sculpture. Stanton, too, congratulated the artist for surpassing any other likeness he had ever seen. In the years immediately following the Civil War, Americans struggled with the difficult psychological work of understanding the cataclysmic changes that had been wrought on the country and their own lives. Monument building was an important part of the public task of dealing with the conflict. Individuals could attempt the private work with the aid of more personal monuments. The Council of War functioned as a monument in miniature that could be placed in one's home. Even before the group was released to the public, the New York Evening Post was quick to distinguish it as a "higher flight" than Rogers' earlier Civil War subjects. Eight years later it was still considered "worthy of reproduction in marble as a historical subject." Viewers eagerly embraced these faithful portrayals as personal memorials that could take on their intense, private feelings about the war and the men depicted. These individual responses are reflected in the wide variation of critical interpretations of the three men's expressions. In the years after the group was released, writers called Lincoln's face by turns sad and anxious, lit up with hope, and cheerfully approving of Grant's plan. Comments on Stanton's expression ranged from "thoughtful attention," to reflective, to irritable. Even though Rogers marketed the group at the relatively high price of $25, it was one of his most popular works. He produced three versions that show slight variations in the position of Stanton's hands and the position of his head.

This bronze served as the master model for the plasters that Rogers sold to a broad audience of middle-class Americans. Rogers' later oeuvre includes a number of scenes from popular plays of his day. The sculptor enjoyed great success with his series of three works based on the stage version of Washington Irving's tale "Rip Van Winkle." The play was written by the Irish actor, playwright, and producer Dion Boucicault and presented at New York's Olympia Theater in 1866. Rogers probably met Boucicault while at work on the Rip Van Winkle series, and the artist began this vignette from Boucicault's 1874 play The Shaughraun very soon after it opened. Boucicault wrote and starred in The Shaughraun, a play set in present-day Ireland centering on the fortunes of the siblings Robert and Claire Ffolliott. The local squire Corry Kinchela schemes to acquire their family estate, as well as Robert's fiancée. He sets up Robert to be arrested as a Fenian (a supporter of Irish independence) and exiled to Australia. The English officer Captain Molineux enters the action in search of Fenians and becomes enamored of Claire. Robert's boyhood friend Conn (the Shaughraun) comes to his aid. In a series of kidnappings, escapes, last-minute rescues by Conn, and even Conn's feigned death, at the play's end Robert is a free man, Molineux and Claire Ffolliott will marry, and the Fenians are granted general amnesty. The play opened at Wallack's Theater on November 14, 1874, to uniformly enthusiastic reviews and enjoyed an exceptionally long run of 143 performances. Boucicault sat for Rogers in December, as did the dog who played the role of Tatters (Rogers' sketchbook, 1955.275, includes measurements and a sketch). As he did with his Rip Van Winkle series, Rogers focused on the single figure, rather than creating a multifigure composition. He depicted Conn describing "how he made his dog perform to amuse the soldiers outside the prison where his master [Robert] was confined, while he [Conn] played familiar tunes on his fiddle to let him know that he was there." Rogers faithfully reproduced Boucicault's costume, and virtually every notice of the sculpture praised how masterfully the artist captured the actor's likeness and manner. On the show's closing night, March 6, 1875, a group of twenty-five New Yorkers presented a version of the statue to Boucicault in congratulations for the play's success. Boucicault insisted that the title of the play be The Shaughraun, a term that most New Yorkers were unlikely to know (much less be able to pronounce). It was an Irish word for a vagabond or wanderer, describing the main character Conn. Boucicault's choice is in keeping with the nationalism that informs the play itself. Though Boucicault was later criticized for indulging in stereotypes, including the common "stage Irish" portrayal of Conn as a drunken comic rogue, The Shaughraun was pioneering in its address of Fenians. New Yorkers would have known about ongoing violence in Ireland over English rule, and they would have been keenly aware of the Orange Riots that had rocked New York in 1870 and 1871. On July 12 of both years, Irish Catholics clashed with Irish Protestants marching to commemorate the 1690 victory at the Battle of the Boyne that confirmed the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland. Eight died in 1870, and more than sixty were killed the following year. Boucicault's play combined sensationalism and realism to offer a final scenario of reconciliation between the English and Irish characters and, notably, the pardon of Irish nationalists. Boucicault had addressed contentious social issues before. In 1859 he produced an antislavery play titled The Octoroon, based on the tragic type of the beautiful light-skinned woman doomed to a life of slavery based on her one-eighth portion of African American blood. Rogers may have felt a kinship with Boucicault in his embrace of current issues; Rogers' own controversial antislavery sculpture The Slave Auction dated from the same year, and he had considered the octoroon as a subject. There is no evidence that Rogers had a particular sympathy for the Irish cause, but he would certainly have been aware of the play's political subtext. In taking on a potentially incendiary subject that also represented one of the most popular plays of the decade, Rogers made a vital connection with both political events and American culture. The Shaughraun and "Tatters" proved popular among Rogers' audience and apparently had a lasting appeal; it remained in his sales catalogues into the late 1880s.

This bronze served as the master model for the plasters that Rogers sold to a broad audience of middle-class Americans. Rogers contemplated the plays of Shakespeare as a potential subject from the earliest years of his professional career. In 1861 he wrote of his plans for a series and assayed a handful of such themes into 1862, including one titled The Merchant of Venice, which he showed at the National Academy of Design (to his dismay, it went unnoticed). No examples of these early groups survive. Nearly twenty years passed before the Bard resurfaced in Rogers' work. The sculptor created an acclaimed series of groups that included "Is It So Nominated in the Bond?" (1936.659, 1926.37) from The Merchant of Venice; The Wrestlers (1936.645, 1926.37) from As You Like It; "Ha! I Like Not That" (1936.658, 1929.108) from Othello; and "You Are a Spirit, I Know: When Did You Die?" (1936.646, 1932.99, 1948.413) from King Lear. He concluded with this work from Romeo and Juliet. The play intertwines elements of comedy and tragedy, and Rogers turned to a moment of flirtation and courtship, as he had done successfully in numerous other sculptures. However, viewers knew the romance's tragic end, giving this early scene particular tension and poignancy. He chose the moment from act 1, scene 5, when the young lovers first meet at a masked ball at the Capulet house. Romeo has come in the disguise of a palmer, that is, a religious pilgrim. He wears a rough cloak over his courtly clothing, as well as prayer beads and a bag bearing a scallop shell, a medieval symbol of pilgrimage. He has just kissed Juliet's hand and lifts his mask to make himself known to her. Lovely Juliet gazes at him intently as she is bodily pulled away by her nurse, who has an arm around her waist and holds her hand. A master of texture and detail, Rogers created a stark contrast between Juliet's smooth, fresh hand and the elderly nurse's wrinkled and veined one. The nurse is modestly dressed and, like Romeo, wears prayer beads; hers, however, are not part of a costume but a symbol of her genuine piety. This sculpture is more intimately composed than Rogers' previous Shakespearean groups, lacking any indication of a setting. Rather than using a rectangular base as he had done for other Shakespearean groups to create an enlarged, stagelike space, Rogers chose an oval base that reduces the space between the figures. Romeo even leans over, placing himself at the women's height. Juliet is pressed against the nurse, and the open space between her and Romeo, which will grow as she is pulled away, suggests the distance between them; soon after this moment each discovers the other's identity as a bitter enemy. Nineteenth-century Americans were more familiar with the works of Shakespeare than we are today, and many New Yorkers would have remembered the elaborate version of Romeo and Juliet mounted at the spectacular Booth Theater in 1869. Edwin Booth and his soon-to-be wife, Mary F. McVicker, played the title roles to an incredibly successful six-week run. The play's popularity in New York continued for years; it was presented nearly every year in the city throughout the 1870s and 1880s.

Rogers' late oeuvre includes a number of scenes from popular plays of his day, among them several works of Shakespeare and Washington Irving's tale "Rip Van Winkle." In these two groups, the artist took his subject from an opera. The French composer Charles Gounod's Faust, loosely based on the novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, was a huge success in Paris in the 1860s, and it quickly became part of the standard international repertoire throughout the late nineteenth century. This particularly lavish production called for elaborate sets and costumes, a large chorus, and a ballet. It was such a favorite in New York that it opened the opera season every year for decades; Edith Wharton referred to the tradition in her novel The Age of Innocence. Rogers chose three moments in the early acts of the play that show the budding romance between Faust and Marguerite. Faust, an aging and disillusioned scholar, bargains with the devil Mephistopheles for the opportunity to experience all things in exchange for his soul. Transformed into a handsome young man, he pursues the lovely Marguerite. The opening group of the series depicts the end of act 2. Titled Their First Meeting, it shows Faust offering his arm to Marguerite, who shrinks back modestly. The prayer beads hanging from her waist attest to her piety. In his sales catalogue Rogers reproduced their dialogue from Bayard Taylor's 1870 translation of the opera. The newly young suitor greets her, saying, "Fair lady, may I thus make free / To offer you my arm and company?" She responds austerely, "I am no lady, am not fair / Can without escort home repair." As Rogers did with the Rip Van Winkle series, here he created a simple composition for each group, intending that the three together would form a unified and more complex whole. In the second group of the series, Marguerite and Martha: Trying on the Jewels, Faust, with Mephistopheles' help, has left a casket of jewels at Marguerite's door. She tries them on in the company of her old guardian Martha, admiring their effect on her appearance in a hand mirror. In the opera, the young woman expresses her rapture over the beauty of these ornaments with a famous aria known as "The Jewel Song." For whatever reason, Rogers neither advertised this group nor included it in his sales catalogues, though it is referred to in at least one contemporary newspaper. It is difficult to understand why the artist downplayed the middle group of his series, particularly one that referenced a well-known and beloved moment in a vastly popular opera. Whatever his reasons, very few versions were sold, and it is now one of his rarest groups (in fact, the N-YHS does not own a copy of it). The final group shows Faust triumphant at the end of act 3. He has come to Marguerite's garden, and, after she plays a flirtatious game of "I love thee, I love thee not" with her flowers, she confesses her affection and allows Faust to kiss her. They part, but it is clear that Faust's seduction will succeed. In Rogers' composition both engage equally in high coquetry: Faust kisses her hand with a longing look, and she accepts his advances with a feigned shyness that is belied by her outstretched hand and tilted head. As Rogers did with groups taken from the stage, he included an architectural element that suggests a set piece. Marguerite processes up a partial staircase with richly scrolling ironwork; leaves and foliage below hint at the garden where their tryst takes place. Rogers ended his series on this romantic note, but his audience would have been well aware of the grimmer scenes that followed. Faust impregnates Marguerite and abandons her. She then kills her child and as a result is to be hanged. In a rather thin version of a happy ending, Marguerite rejects Mephistopheles' offer of rescue from execution. As she mounts the scaffold, a chorus of angels announces that she is saved and will find the reward for her virtue in heaven. The series was created at a time when Rogers' sales were declining and he was developing a tremor in his hand that would soon end his career. They are among his final works.

One of the most beloved American poets of the mid-19th century. Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, the son of Stephen Longfellow, a lawyer. After graduating from Bowdoin College in 1825, he taught literature there (1829-35) and at Harvard (1836-54). He gained recognition through the publication of his poetry in periodicals and in separate volumes - for example, Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841), which included such favorites as "The Wreck of the Hesperus" and "The Village Blacksmith." Other long works followed: Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847), The Song of Hiawatha (1855), and The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858). In 1854 Longfellow resigned from Harvard to devote himself entirely to writing, his reputation firmly established. He was the first American poet to achieve wide recognition abroad. Longfellow was a close friend of Hawthorne, Emerson, Holmes, Lowell, and many others of that brilliant literary circle which centered in Boston, Cambridge, and Concord. As a boy Daniel Chester French grew up in Cambridge and Concord where he knew all the men and women of that remarkable literary colony. In fact, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was present along with President Grant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Russell Lowell, and other dignitaries, when young French's famous Minuteman statue was unveiled near Concord in April 1875. It was therefore quite natural that French was chosen to execute the bust of the poet for the Longfellow Memorial in Cambridge. He worked on it in 1914; the original went to Cambridge, and the Society received the plaster replica which had remained in his studio until 1950. Longfellow had died thirty-two years before French modeled this bust, so the dynamic portrait of the bearded old sage and poet was executed from photographs and the sculptor's own recollections of him. French may also have known the splendid bronze statue of Longfellow by Franklin Simmons in Portland, Maine.

The thirty-second president of the United States was born at Hyde Park, New York, the son of James and Sara (Delano) Roosevelt. He was a distant cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, who became president while Franklin was attending Harvard (A.B. 1903). After being admitted to the bar in 1907 he practiced his profession in New York, although politics absorbed more and more of his time and interests. He was elected to the state senate in 1910 and from 1913-20 was assistant secretary of the Navy. In 1928 he was elected governor of New York, and in 1932 he defeated Herbert Hoover for the presidency, offering his "New Deal" policies to the voters as a cure for the business depression that gripped the nation. Under Roosevelt, who was elected to an unprecedented four terms in the White House, the federal government entered the daily life and work of Americans as it had never done before. The Roosevelt administration instituted a series of innovative federal programs and agencies such as the social security system, the Works Projects Administration, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and so on. Roosevelt was the nation's leader during most of World War II. When he died suddenly at Warm Springs, Georgia, on April 12, 1945, the tide of battle had clearly turned to assure an Allied victory. Jo Davidson, who by 1934 was already established as one of America's foremost portrait sculptors, was invited by Sara Delano Roosevelt to do a portrait head of her son, the president. He called at the White House and was warmly received by his subject who invited him to stay for dinner. A fast friendship developed as the sculptor modeled his sensitive portrait with its reflection of the care and responsibilities that fell upon the chief executive. In his autobiography Davidson recalled the experience: "The next day I worked in the President's office. The President sat at his desk and visitors came and went. I rolled my stand around to observe him from all angles. When the first visitor of the day entered, he stopped short when he saw me but F.D.R laughed and said: 'It's quite all right. You can say anything you like in from of Jo - he just don't know nothing.'" (Jo Davidson, Between Sittings, 1951, pp. 276-277.)