Heg is best known as the colonel who commanded the 15th Wisconsin Volunteer Regiment on the Union side in the American Civil War.
A 10 ft (3.0 m) high pyramid of 8 in (20 cm) shells at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park marks the site on the battlefield where Heg was mortally wounded.
[1] The statue depicts Colonel Heg standing in his Union Army uniform, with a long belted double-breasted dress coat, riding boots, and girt with a sword to his left side.
The sculptor of the statue was Paul Fjelde who, in describing his work said, "The figure that I have created shows a much younger Colonel Heg than his photographs.
[4][5] It was shipped in 1925 from Norway on the Norwegian-American Line, arrived in New York on August 21 of that year, and completed the rest of its journey to Madison on September 3.
The delay between arrival and dedication lasted for more than a year, and was due to the need to raise some $2,000 to purchase and erect a base for the statue's final home.
[23][24] Protester Micah Le said the two statues paint a picture of Wisconsin as a racially progressive state "even though slavery has continued in the form of a corrections system built around incarcerating Blacks.
[26][27] In an internal memo obtained by The Nation, the toppling of the statue was listed as one of the contributing factors in creating the federal riot control program Protecting American Communities Task Force.
[38] The state of Wisconsin received a grant of $30,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities the following October towards the expense of repairing of both the Heg and Forward statues.
The statues were taken to Detroit for restoration by Venus Bronze Works Inc. with reinstallation on the Capitol grounds then anticipated by July 2021.
[39][40] On June 25, 2020, in response to the vandalism, U.S. Representative Bryan Steil introduced a bill to rename Muskego's post office for Heg, though it was never acted on during the remainder of the 116th United States Congressional session and has not been re-introduced.