The Nation's First Monument and the Origins of the American Memorial Tradition

The commemorative tradition in early American art is considered for the first time in Sally Webster's study of public monuments and the construction of an American patronymic tradition. Until now, no attempt has been made to create a coherent early history of the carved symbolic language of American liberty and independence. Webster's study provides a new focus on New York City as the eighteenth-century city in which the European tradition of public commemoration was reconstituted as monuments to liberty's heroes.