The Freedman
Object Description
An opponent of slavery, Ward created The Freedman shortly after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation freeing individuals enslaved within Confederate states. Portraying a seated Black man wearing broken shackles, this work marked a new way of portraying emancipation in sculpture. Typically, 19th-century abolitionist imagery portrayed enslaved people as passive, awaiting liberation by White saviors. In contrast, Ward’s figure is someone who has actively sought out and attained his own freedom, with an upturned gaze that conveys agency and strength. Ward explained that the pose was calculated “to express not one set free by any proclamation, so much as by his own love of freedom and a conscious power to break things.”
This cast of The Freedman is unique. Of eight known to exist, it is the only one with an operable shackle and key, and the only one with a carved inscription honoring the Massachusetts 54th, a regiment of Black soldiers who served during the Civil War.
—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)
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Teacher Resources
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Why do artists create memorials?
How can an artwork help a community remember and/or honor an individual or group?
What historical events might prompt an artist to sculpt a memorial or monument?
What can an artwork tell us about an artist’s attitudes toward a historical event?
How have artists in the United States historically treated the subject of slavery in their artwork? How have they treated the subject of freedom?
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Grades 5–8
In 1863 during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln created the Emancipation Proclamation, which was meant to free slaves in the South. John Quincy Adams Ward made this sculpture to honor and symbolize that event. Students will imagine that they are the artist and are writing to a newspaper about their new sculpture. Describe how the sculpture looks (be specific). How does it symbolize the Emancipation Proclamation? Why is this sculpture important?
Grades 9–12
Art historian Lewis I. Sharp called The Freedman “the sculptural manifestation of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.” Read the transcription of the Emancipation Proclamation while looking at The Freedman. Do you agree with Sharp’s view? Why or why not? Which part of the Emancipation Proclamation does The Freedman exemplify particularly well? Defend your response by providing visual and literary evidence.