Civil War Horse Sculpture
Middleburg, Virginia
The "Bridled Veterans" Horses and Mules Memorial was sculpted by Tessa Pullan in 1997. It pays tribute, according to its plaque, to the 1.5 million horse that became casualties during the Civil War.
"Many perished within twenty miles of Middleburg," says the statue's plaque, in three big battles in a single month: June 1863. The implied backstory is that the horse's rider is dead, and the weary horse may itself not have long to live.
The statue was commissioned by a wealthy horse breeder, who thought it unfair that Civil War soldiers had hundreds of monuments, but Civil War horses had none. Pullan went to great lengths to equip the horse statue in gear used by both sides during the war, so it could have been either Union or Confederate.
"Bridled Veterans" proved so popular that three copies exist: one here, one at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture in Richmond, and one at Fort Riley in Kansas.