The Rescue

Source: Greenough, Horatio, The Rescue, marble, 1850, Histories of the National Mall, George Mason University, https://mallhistory.org/files/original/a2c492a45af23de5451605771f712038.jpg.

Date: 1850

Text/Transcription:

This sculpture, titled The Rescue, was completed at the height of rapid U.S. territorial expansion and adherence to the ideal of Manifest Destiny. The U.S. annexed Texas in 1845. Three years later, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War and added 525,000 square miles of U.S. territory, including all or parts of what is now California, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. The sculpture depicts a white settler, holding an armed Native man by the wrists; at the left rear of the group, a crouching pioneer woman desperately clasps a small child. The scene suggests the white man stopped a massacre and he will ultimately defeat his adversary. The sculpture was exhibited in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., from 1853 until 1958. Many viewers assumed it depicted Daniel Boone (1734-1820), a popular pioneer and frontiersman. The scene both reflected and reinforced the belief that violence in the name of westward expansion was justified.