Rogers's works; and lastly, a
group called 'The Home Guard, or Midnight on the Border,' in which a
heroic woman, accompanied by a little girl, is represented as stepping
out, pistol in hand, to confront the assailants of her humble home."
In 1862 Mr. Rogers removed his studio to the corner of Fifth Avenue and
Twenty-sixth Street, where he still remains. He has followed up the
earlier productions named above with "The Bushwhacker," a scene
representing a Tennessee loyalist dogging the footsteps of the Southern
army; "Taking the Oath and Drawing Rations," the best and certainly the
most popular of his works,--a group of four, representing a Southern
lady with her little boy, compelled to take the oath of allegiance in
order to obtain rations for her family. A negro boy, bearing a basket
for his mistress, leans on the barrel watching the proceeding with the
most intense interest. The woman's face is wonderful, and it expresses
eloquently the struggle in her breast between her devotion to the South
and her love for the boy before her, and the officer tendering the oath
almost speaks the sympathy which her suffering has awakened in him.
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