Thomas Ball began as a painter, but turned to sculpture without formal training in about 1850 and had a successful career with portraits and monuments. Two of his monuments are particularly well known: the equestrian statue of George Washington in Boston’s Public Gardens and Lincoln Freeing the Slaves, usually known as the Emancipation Group in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C., which was paid for with contributions from freed slaves. For much of his career Ball lived in Florence, where he was a friend of Hiram Powers.

Lawyer, orator, congressman, senator, and secretary of state Daniel Webster (1782–1852) had a long career in United States politics, serving first as a congressman in 1813. A native of New Hampshire, Webster frequently sought compromise in the tensions between the North and South, and at midcentury, as secretary of state, he supported the passage of the Compromise of 1850, a group of laws intended to address issues of slavery and territorial expansion. One of these, the Fugitive Slave Act, required the return of enslaved persons to their owners, even from states where slavery had been abolished. Many northerners bitterly opposed this law, eroding support for Webster.