The Spirit of the Union

Inscriptions

Inscribed, on stone, lower left margin: PUBLISHED BY CURRIER & IVES.; inscribed, on stone, lower center margin: Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1860, by E. Dechaux, in the Clerk's Office of the United States, for the Southern District of New York.; inscribed, on stone, lower right margin: 152 NASSAU ST. NEW YORK.; inscribed, on stone, lower center: THE SPIRIT OF THE UNION. / Lo! on high the glorious form, / of WASHINGTON lights all the gloom: / And words of warning seem to come, / From out the portal of his tomb. / Americans your fathers shed; / Their blood to rear the UNIONS fane, Then let your blood as free be given, / The bond of UNION to maintain;

Label

Floating on a heavenly cloud beneath the US Capitol, George Washington wears his Revolutionary Army uniform and points to his tomb at the lower left. This 1860 print issued by the popular printing firm Currier and Ives invoked Washington as a military leader from Virginia to dissuade the southern states who were threatening to secede from the Union. The text below alerted viewers that “words of warning seem to come, from out the portal of his tomb” and reminded them that US success relied on the states remaining united. Speaking from beyond the grave, Washington embodied the print’s title. He was the “Spirit of the Union.”

From the 2025-26 exhibition Revolution Reconsidered: History, Myth, and Propaganda, curated by Michael W. Hartman (Jonathan Little Cohen Curator of American Art), Haely Chang (Jane and Raphael Bernstein Associate Curator of East Asian Art), Elizabeth Rice Mattison (Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Programming and Curator of European Art), Ashley B. Offill (Curator of Collections), and Evonne Fuselier (Hood Museum Board of Advisors Mutual Learning Fellow)

Exhibition History

Revolution Reconsidered: History, Myth, and Propaganda, Harteveldt Family Gallery and Owen Robertson Cheatham Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 18, 2025 - August 8, 2026.

Provenance

Dick's House, Dartmouth College; transferred to present colllection, 2006.

Catalogue Raisonne

Conningham (1949): 5655; Gale Research (1983): 6057

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Subjects