The Wounded Scout, a Friend in the Swamp

This sculpture shows a barefoot Black man navigating a Southern swamp as he attempts to escape his enslavers. He risks his own life by stopping to aid a White Union soldier who has been wounded behind Confederate lines.

John Rogers's numerous scenes of Union efforts during the Civil War appealed to abolitionists, who purchased affordable plaster casts like this one to display in their homes. Although they celebrated emancipation, the works also reinforced the long-standing racist social order. This dynamic is also found in the literature of the period, in which a White protagonist is often paired with a Black figure "who can be assumed to be in some way bound, fixed, unfree, and serviceable." (Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, 1992)

Label text from The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture November 8, 2024 -- September 14, 2025