The thing about horses and their feet

When I tell people I'm an art historian at a party, sometimes I get blank stares, followed by, "Well, you know, my cousin's best friend's babysitter is a graphic designer, and she knows all about that art stuff." And then the conversation dies. But other times, the conversation will go on to touch upon the old question, "So, what's with the horses' feet in Civil War monuments anyway? Do they predict whether the general died or what?"

I am here today to explain and dispel that old chestnut, as a public service.


The urban legend goes like this: If you see a statue of a Civil War general on a horse, and all four feet are on the ground, that means he lived through the war. If one of the feet is off the ground, that means he was wounded. If two of the feet are off the ground, then he was killed. If three or more feet are off the ground, then, well, you are dealing with one heck of a flying horse. And there are lots of variations on that.

So is there any truth to this? Overall, no. But a little bit yes.

First of all, dispel from your mind that this has anything to do with any place other than Gettysburg. Your local Civil War monument dedicated to your town hero may be an equestrian statue, and it may have four, three, two, or zero feet on the ground, but it doesn't have anything to do with anything related to the war hero's fate. The only thing you're learning by looking at your local monument is whether the artist that sculpted it knew anything about horse anatomy or not.

Now, at Gettysburg, up until 1998, this weird tidbit was, completely by accident, with no forethought or planning, with no consultation with any of the artists.... true. The "number of feet" did accidentally correlate with whether the general was killed wounded, or left unscathed at the end of the three days of fighting. But this pattern was pieced together by code-loving nuts in the twentieth century, never an artistic tradition.


How a sculptor chooses to render the horse component of an equestrian statue has much more to do with artistic license and skill than with anything else. Bronze is incredibly heavy, and thus the most stable way to render a statue of a horse is to place all four feet on the ground. Many great artists have struggled with the concept of a rearing horse, Leonardo being one famous example. The statue above, the monument to General John Reynolds (killed) at Gettysburg by H.K. Bush-Brown, depicts a horse with two feet raised, but the statue is carefully counterbalanced to distribute the monument's weight evenly. The resulting sculpture is a paean to the skill of the artist, not some attempt to adhere to a useless factoid.

I know I said that this weird business was only inadvertently true until 1998 - what changed?


This is the equestrian statue for Confederate general James Longstreet, sculpted by Gary Casteel. Longstreet, often maligned, was one of Robert E. Lee's most trusted corps commanders, but for years after the war he was blamed for the failure of Pickett's Charge due to the fact that he challenged Lee's plan of attacking an entrenched enemy over a mile of open ground (who in the world would think something like that would fail?). Longstreet's star has risen in recent years, however, at least in part due to his sympathetic portrayal in Michael Shaara's historical novel The Killer Angels and the 1995 film Gettysburg. I kind of love the way this monument subverts the idea of a traditional equestrian statue entirely by placing the statue on the ground directly in the viewer's space, and by the horse's dynamically frightened stance. But as you can see, the horse has a hoof off the ground, and Longstreet made it through Gettysburg with nary a scratch.

So, in sum, this old chestnut is never true in most places, was inadvertently and accidentally true for a time at Gettysburg, and now is true no longer. And if I ever meet Sarah Vowell, who I love, I will gush about how I love her writing but scold her for mentioning this urban legend in one of her books.

If you want to see another take on this legend, check out this article on Snopes.