Context

Union Army hero and lifelong military officer, Philip Henry Sheridan was appointed Head of the Department of the Missouri in 1867 and was responsible for the protection of the Great Plains. In this role, he employed the same scorched earth tactics against the American Indians that he was notorious for using against the South during the Civil War — including allowing Bison poaching on tribal lands that nearly exterminated the species. Sheridan was particularly close to Chicago, where he was stationed in 1871. After martial law was declared in the days following the Great Fire, Sheridan and his forces were credited with keeping the city safe. Gutzon Borglum had earlier depicted Sheridan on a rearing horse in Washington, D.C.; but the Chicago version was his favorite. Borglum, who also memorialized Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld in Lincoln Park, became most famous for his Mount Rushmore monument (1927-1941) and he was the first artist commissioned to produce monumental images of Confederate heroes Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson at Stone Mountain, Georgia.