In April 1859 Rogers returned from a truncated five-month period of study in Paris and Rome, and for the next few years he wavered between realistic subjects from everyday life rendered in plaster and mythological and allegorical subjects carved from the more enduring and admired medium of marble, associated with the long-entrenched neoclassical style in sculpture. In mid-1860 he wrote to his mother that he wanted to do something in marble: "I have a design in my head of a 'sweet thing,'" and he called it his "first attempt at anything ideal." The Fairy's Whisper became his first and only uncommissioned, original ideal subject. This ambitious work depicts a young boy whose play has been arrested by a winged sprite approaching his ear. His reclining pose is distinctly classicized, and the fanciful curves of the fairy's costume gracefully flow into the foliage near his head. Rogers was concerned that the figure be as accurate as possible, and he persuaded young immigrant children to serve as models (he described bribing them with "sugar plums & cents"). [note for quote?] His ambitions for the work are evidenced in its relatively large scale, with the boy rendered life size. The sculpture caught the imagination of critics, who seemed relieved to see this gifted young sculptor taking the well-trodden path of high artistic ideals embodied in mythical subjects. Rogers noticed that everyone who saw it described it using the word "beautiful," and it made a striking contrast to the pointed political message of his controversial plaster The Slave Auction (1928.28) from the previous year. The Boston Daily Evening Transcript noted, "We have seen before several smaller groups designed by him, but none which have borne so decidedly the signs of a true genius." The New-York Daily Tribune trumpeted its praise of Rogers' newfound "genius" and his "extraordinary skill, facility, and power." This praise must have been gratifying, but Rogers faced the fundamental problem of trying to derive some income from his work. He wished to render his subject in marble, but he was discouraged when he realized the project would cost $350, and he would have to charge $600 to make it worth his effort. Ever the pragmatist, he calculated that he could cast the work in plaster for $25 (far less than the price for marble, but five times what he charged for the smaller Slave Auction) and make it available in time for Christmas. Unfortunately, it did not sell well. Rogers eventually turned to subjects from everyday life, paving the way for the movement toward realism in American sculpture.

This bronze served as the master model for the plasters that Rogers sold to a broad audience of middle-class Americans. Rogers considered Taking the Oath and Drawing Rations one of his finest works, and it is often referred to as his masterpiece. In this psychological study of the complex tensions that characterized the end of the Civil War and the Reconstruction era, the artist struck a chord with both Northern and Southern citizens, making it one of his most popular groups. In his previous two groups, The Bushwhacker (1949.240) and The Home Guard: Midnight on the Border (1932.96), Rogers attempted to speak to sympathies above and below the Mason-Dixon Line by depicting images of families caught up in the conflict in the border states. Neither sold well, and Rogers was concerned that his next sculpture be a success. He complained about his difficulty finding his next subject to his new wife, Hattie, and on September 14, 1865, he wrote her a jubilant letter: "Eureka! Hattie Eureka! I have got a wrinkle which I think is going to make a good group." He went on to explain, "It is the same idea that your Uncle [David Francis] told of seeing in Charleston, with a difference. A proud southern woman taking the oath and drawing rations. There is a chance to make a magnificent woman-something of the style of Marie Antoinette in the trial scene." Rogers referred to the French queen's dignified endurance of a humiliating trial and to what he considered a contemporary analogue: a Southern woman forced to take an oath of allegiance to the Union to secure food for her hungry family. In the closing years of the war and thereafter, the United States required the oath in exchange for aid or to travel, hold political office, buy goods, or protect personal property. Americans in both North and South would have been familiar with such scenes, whether from the pages of periodicals or from personal experience. Rogers rendered a stately woman in fine but modest dress with her hand on the Bible about to declare her loyalty to the Union. She caresses her boy, the reason for her action; his toe peeks from his shoe, a subtle sign of their fall from wealth to poverty. Next to her a Union soldier lifts his cap in a gesture of respect; his uniform identifies him as an officer of the second corps of the Army of the Potomac. At left an African American boy lounges with a basket, ready to receive the sustenance that the oath will provide. A recently freed slave, still in her service, he is barefoot, and his clothing is exceptionally ragged, his shirt nearly falling off his shoulders in tatters, suggesting that his poverty began long before. He gazes at his mistress with an inscrutable expression. After the war, Americans faced the difficult task of reuniting North and South, along with emotionally charged questions about whether punishment or clemency would guide the nation's course. Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural urged reconciliation "with malice toward none, with charity for all," and Rogers agreed that "the conciliatory course is the right one now." The artist offered a vision of Northern clemency that kept Southern dignity (and class distinctions) intact. His sculpture was hugely popular; in a rare move, Rogers raised the price of the group in response to strong sales, and it remained in his sales catalogue for the next thirty years. Rogers' success lay in evoking a scene that allowed Americans on both sides of the conflict to identify with their own concerns for the country's future. Many Unionists applauded the officer's chivalric treatment of the vanquished, and Confederates considered the scene a tribute to Southern womanhood. Critics relished the inner conflict between loyalty and necessity played out in the woman's face and posture. In the years following the sculpture's release, they offered widely varied interpretations of the African American boy, who raised the complex issue of where his place would be as a newly freed slave and a United States citizen. Most early accounts noted his wonderment at the scene, not yet understanding the import of what he witnessed, but one writer felt the boy "seems to appreciate the altered circumstances of his mistress." The abolitionist Lydia Maria Child wrote sardonically that he seemed to be watching his mistress earnestly "to see what wry faces she will make while swallowing the bitter pill." By 1877 one writer referred to his "smile of satisfaction," "as though the humiliation of his mistress was an ample satisfaction for the wrongs his race has endured." In 1868 the Art Journal expressed widespread American worries in the turbulent postwar years about whether such a reconciliation could be accomplished: though the sculpture "tells the whole story of the war . . . there is a certain ideality in it" that the writer considered "impossible."

This sculpture was submitted to a competition for the project of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. The completed colossal portrait heads at Mount Rushmore were made by Gutzon Borglum and unveiled in 1930-1941

Rogers' catalogue describes the scene: "The boy has been sent in haste for the country doctor, who has ventured to return seated behind him on the horse. His medicine is in some danger of begin spilled as well as himself." The urgency of the errand is conveyed not only in the doctor's open bag with its bottles bouncing inside; he also literally holds on to his hat to keep it from flying off. Both man and boy have risen out of their seats, suggesting the horse's great speed as they gallop along, and even the horse seems to sense the peril of the loved one at home, as its eyes bulge in panic. Rogers had long been acclaimed for his mastery in depicting horses, and critics were quick to praise the skill he showed with this equine. It was identified as a Morgan, a distinctly American breed known for its compact build and companionable nature. Its large eyes and expressive face made it a perfect choice for this dramatic episode. Rogers carefully studied horses, taking detailed measurements and making anatomical casts from specimens at the New York College of Veterinary Medicine. He also studied Eadweard Muybridge's stop-action photographs of horses in motion. The Morgan's legs are positioned according to Muybridge's findings, not splayed with all four feet off the ground, as artists had previously rendered them, and as Rogers had done just a few years earlier in his 1879 sculpture Polo (1927.50, 1948.409). In 1877 Rogers built a house in rural New Canaan, Connecticut, and this subject was inspired by a Dr. Richards of that town who rode and carried medicines in his saddlebags. The boy was modeled after the artist's nine-year-old son Derby. Though twenty-first-century viewers might mistakenly see this as a nostalgic image, contemporary writers were quick to recognize that Rogers was contrasting city and country life of the present day and pointing out the new conveniences and technologies that were widening the gulf between them. A Baltimore newspaper explained, "Nothing can be more real to those who know the ways of our rural regions. In our cities, the boy who goes for the doctor is now the telephone, and our M.D. rides up in his two-horse carriage." However, the sculpture does suggest a sense of nostalgia with regard to the artist's own oeuvre. In the years just before creating this work, Rogers had been engaged with large-scale theatrical subjects taken from Shakespeare that were embellished with a wealth of surface detail. In Fetching the Doctor the artist returned to his earlier rural themes of boys with horses from nearly a decade before, such as We Boys (1929.96, 1936.661, 1936.711) and Going for the Cows (1929.98, 1936.650) of 1872. The current group shares their smaller size, relatively simple characterization, and unadorned surfaces, though here the sculptor introduced a note of drama, showing the effects of his recent immersion in theatrical scenes. Fetching the Doctor was priced at $10, half the cost of his recent groups. As his works grew larger, more elaborate, and more expensive, it may be that Rogers returned to his beloved small genre scenes to assure his clients that he would continue to offer sculpture that was truly affordable to a broad audience, in keeping with his early aspirations.

Going for the Cows can be seen as a pendant to Rogers' We Boys (1929.96, 1936.661, 1936.711) of the previous year. These small, similarly scaled groups represent nostalgic country idylls centered on a horse. The sculptor's long-standing interest in animals was evident more than a decade before when he wrote to his mother, "I want to make studies of animals and horses particularly." He took detailed measurements of a variety of horses, and two years after releasing this sculpture he displayed studies of equine anatomy at the National Academy of Design. He also studied Eadweard Muybrudge's pioneering photographs of horses in motion. Rogers produced a number of other sculptures in which horses figure prominently, most notably a life-size equestrian monument to the Civil War general John F. Reynolds. In this rural scene, a boy has ridden to pasture and has lowered the bars of the fence to gain entry, but he and his dog have been diverted from their errand by their investigation of a woodchuck's hole. The boy's face glows with fascinated pleasure; it was said that a member of the Silliman family, one of Rogers' New Canaan, Connecticut, neighbors, was the model. The dog represents another meticulous and affectionate animal study; Rogers' sketchbook (1955.275) includes a drawing of the dog, called Dash. Though only the torso and hind legs of Dash can be seen, the tensed muscles and wagging tail convey its enthusiasm. The composition is framed by the masterfully rendered horse contentedly munching grass. Its body curves protectively around the boy and dog, forming a proscenium for their small drama. Like Rogers' We Boys of the previous year, Going for the Cows was perceived as an appeal to a simple rural past. One writer declared that everyone must sympathize with the boy shirking his work, "for everyone has been a boy or girl . . . and knows from experience or feeling how necessary it is for that boy to watch that dog and, if possible, find that woodchuck." The group continued to be popular through the 1870s and into the 1880s. Later comments included "What busy business man, exiled from the farm, does not stop with a longing homesick feeling, to look once more at 'Going for the Cows?'" The sculpture could be seen as an escape from the cares and complexities of modern urban life to the pleasures of childhood; indeed, Rogers remembered his own youthful years in the country with great fondness. Rogers wrote that the subject "was intended to be so plain that the most careless observer will not fail to see the joke!" This work and We Boys both tell simple and pleasing stories that lack the scale and narrative ambition of some of his works from the preceding years. The early 1870s were a period of experimentation for Rogers as he cast about for new subjects after the success of his Civil War groups. His situation was similar to that of Winslow Homer, the other American artist known for his war subjects. In the early 1870s Homer, too, created seemingly uncomplicated scenes of children enjoying country settings, such as Snap the Whip of 1872 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). In addition to rural genre, Rogers assayed subjects from literature and theater, sentimental romantic narratives, portraits, and even large figures for outdoors. His pace slowed during this period, perhaps owing to indecision about which path to follow. By the late 1870s he had returned to complex, richly detailed theater subjects, and his genre themes also became larger, more detailed, and more closely connected with contemporary life.