[2][3] The painting was sold on May 19, 2021, for $998,000 plus fees at a Sotheby auction, to a private foundation operated by the Florida-based collectors Thomas H. and Diane DeMell Jacobsen.

It speaks to the founding ideal of the American nation, refers to America’s failure to live up to its own ideals, and is a clarion call for America to be the best version of itself.... For northeasterners such as Cole, the prime source of corruption of American republicanism was the Southern slavocracy and its unjust influence within the federal government.

Cole made explicit his links between the corruption, decline, and fall of the Roman republic, and America’s present by clothing his figures in red, white, and blue.

"[5] Tom Christopher wrote that "[Thomas] Cole’s greatest artistic asset proved to be his untutored eye.

[7] As a child, his surroundings were of Lancashire, England, an area known to be an epicenter of Britain’s primarily industrial region.