This cast was part of the Phrenological Museum of Fowler & Wells, which opened in New York City in 1842. Brothers Orson Squire Fowler (1809-1887) and Lorenzo Niles Fowler (1811-1896) and their business associate Samuel Roberts Wells (1820-1875) were noted phrenologists who read heads to understand the subject's "temperament." Their Phrenological Cabinet displaying casts, skulls, and charts became a popular fixture in the city.

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 he 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 artist's skills and ambition had grown considerably, and for his first mature Shakespearean group he returned to The Merchant of Venice to create the complex and ambitious "Is It So Nominated in the Bond?" The line that Rogers quoted as his title is taken from the climactic trial scene. Shylock, at right, has come to collect a pound of flesh from Antonio in penalty for defaulting on Shylock's loan to him. The dashing young Bassanio holds a bag of gold that Shylock has refused in lieu of payment on his friend's behalf. Distinguished Antonio (modeled after the artist's friend the Reverend Robert Collyer) has shed his cloak and is opening his shirt, preparing for the dreadful fulfillment of their bargain. Looming over the three men is Portia, disguised as a judge. In keeping with Rogers' earlier depictions of intelligent, capable women, she presides over this tangled legal web, dispensing justice and ultimately foiling Shylock. Here she urges Shylock to have a surgeon on hand to attend to Antonio's wounds and Shylock makes his merciless retort. He is the picture of evil and menace, with hooked nose, grimacing face, and pointed beard, brandishing the tools he will use to exact his fee. His skullcap identifies him as a Jew, and Rogers' caricatured portrayal was in keeping with the malicious stereotyping inherent in Shakespeare's portrayal of the moneylender. The composition is a ballet of interlocking gestures: as Antonio shrugs off his cloak, Bassanio puts a reassuring hand on his shoulder. As Portia appeals to Shylock, he points to the document in her hand. Rogers took on the difficult task of conveying the tension and dynamism of the moment in a static form; the characters convey a range of emotions and relate to one another through animated gestures as Shylock's menacing words hang in the air. Late-nineteenth-century Americans were much more familiar with the works of Shakespeare than we are today, and contemporary writers responded strongly to Rogers' characterizations, offering vivid descriptions of the figures that were familiar to them from their own reading and from the popular stage, particularly the villainous Shylock with his exaggerated features. "Is It So Nominated in the Bond?" struck a chord with middle-class Americans. Recommended for teachers and students, it proved to be Rogers' most popular Shakespearean subject and one of the best-selling groups in his entire oeuvre.

Osceola, a leader of the Seminole Indians in Flordia, led the vastly outnumbered Seminole resistance during the Second Seminole War when the United States tried to remove the Seminoles from their lands. After his death in prison in 1838, army doctor Frederick Weedon removed Osceola's head, embalmed it, and made a death mask. The head was later owned in New York City by Dr. Valentine Mott, who put it on display at the Medical College of New York. It disappeared following a fire in 1865.

In this group Rogers touched on nineteenth-century Americans' enjoyment of puzzles and tricks. He conveyed the narrative through a dynamic pyramidal composition that spirals downward from the magician, to his audience of an older man with a boy on his knee (likely modeled after Rogers' son Charlie), to the prestidigitator's sleepy assistant (modeled after his daughter Katherine). The debonair magician has taken the older man's hat and brought forth a number of objects from it, including the gun, the wig, and the loaf of bread on his table, and he is producing his pièce de résistance, a rabbit. Rogers portrayed him as a dubious and even devilish character: the sign on his cabinet advertises him as "Mons Cheatum, the great magician," and his hair forms two curls that resemble horns. Rogers had used this device to deliver a much more serious message about the evils of slavery when he included such curls on the auctioneer in The Slave Auction of 1859, and the faces, hair, and dress of the magician and the auctioneer strongly resemble one another. Each also stands behind a rostrum with a sign explaining his enterprise. It is surprising that Rogers would borrow from such a somber subject for this lighthearted satire, but the character here lacks any malevolent intent; he simply seeks to astonish and entertain-and make a few dollars. The older man wears an expression of incredulity, holding his kerchief to his head as he puzzles over how the objects could have materialized from his hat. The boy on his knee smiles in unmitigated delight. Contemporary writers understood that the man, though a rural type, was not foolishly taken in. Rather, he was trying to figure out how the trick was accomplished. Rogers may have been thinking of the master of such trickery, the showman P. T. Barnum, whose traveling circus presented such wonders to the public as the Fee Jee mermaid. A few years before Barnum had convinced Rogers to include his sculptures in Barnum's Great Traveling World's Fair (to the artist's later dismay). Recent scholars have pointed out that Americans flocked to Barnum's shows, not with a sense of credulity, but with skepticism, and their enjoyment was derived, not from determining whether what he claimed was true, but rather how he was able to present the marvels so convincingly. In the same spirit, the boy in Rogers' sculpture may express wonderment at the magician's feat, but the man is intent on working out the mechanics behind it. The viewer's eye continues down and around the composition to the magician's assistant. Knowing the trick, she is so unimpressed that she has fallen asleep out of boredom. Rogers' sculptures were usually meant to be enjoyed from all sides and sometimes included extra details that reinforced the narrative provided by the front view. In this case, Rogers continued the compositional spiral around to the back of the sculpture to reveal an important element of the story. Behind the table a hand protrudes from between the folds of the covering ready to hand a dove to the magician. Rogers slyly revealed the trick in such a subtle way that many viewers, used to being able to grasp his stories quickly, may not have even noticed it. In fact, it appears that contemporary writers did not notice the hand, with the possible exception of one who advised that the group "will repay repeated examination and close scrutiny." Rogers, usually so forthright in telling his stories, here indulged in a bit of mischief himself, challenging his viewers to play along with the magician with the reward of discovering his trick, if they were alert and persistent.

Karl Heinrich Gruppe began his career as Karl Bitter's principal assistant on the Pulitzer Fountain (1913-1916) on Fifth Avenue between 58th and 59th Streets. He later served as the chief sculptor for the monument restoration project of the New York City Department of Parks (1934-1937).

Sherman, who was born and raised in Ohio, graduated sixth in his class from the Military Academy at West Point in 1840. After uneventful tours of duty in Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia, he resigned his commission and turned, unsuccessfully, to banking and the law. Sherman rejoined the army at the outbreak of the Civil War and saw action at Shiloh under General U.S. Grant, whom he came to admire greatly. He was promoted to brigadier general and succeeded Grant in command of the Army of the Tennessee in 1863. When Grant assumed command of all Union armies, Sherman was placed in charge of the entire southwestern area. His "March to the Sea" led from Chattanooga through Atlanta to Savannah with its important harbor and stores of supplies, which he captured in December 1864. Sherman was considered one of the most brilliant tacticians of the Union generals. In 1869 Sherman became general commanding the army and remained in that capacity for fourteen years. His Memoirs were published in 1875. In a letter to P. Tecmuseh Sherman from Charles C. Beaman, a lawyer, dated February 16, 1891 (two days after General Sherman's death), some of the details relating to the death mask are given: "I have seen Mr. St. Gaudens and he will be at the house at half-past ten this evening. In talking it over, we thought it well to also ask the sculptor Mr. French to be present. . . . I feel very certain that you will all be glad to have the cast made, and that it will be of the greatest use and value hereafter." Augustus Saint-Gaudens was unable to make the mask for some reason, so Daniel Chester French made it. In 1888 Saint-Gaudens had modeled a bust of Sherman, his ideal of the American soldier, working from eighteen sittings with the general in New York; from 1892 to 1903 he worked on the equestrian statue of the general located in Central Park. French never did anything further with the likeness of Sherman and the death mask remained in the possession of the subject's son until he gave it to the Society.

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 cast was part of the Phrenological Museum of Fowler & Wells, which opened in New York City in 1842. Brothers Orson Squire Fowler (1809-1887) and Lorenzo Niles Fowler (1811-1896) and their business associate Samuel Roberts Wells (1820-1875) were noted phrenologists who read heads to understand the subject's "temperament." Their Phrenological Cabinet displaying casts, skulls, and charts became a popular fixture in the city.