Photography and American Civil War

Photography and War

• FRANK H. GOODYEAR AND DAVID C. WARD
 
•  THE CIVIL WAR ISSUE
 
•  U.S.

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JUST AS THE Civil War modernized the economy, it modernized culture, even if its effects took time to manifest themselves. (One of the great novels resulting from the war, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, was not published until 1884.) It eroded Victorian habits of feeling and sentimentality. As Edmund Wilson argued, the war chastened American language, making it sharper, more concise, more pungent. The war stripped away illusions. This scourging was accelerated by a flourishing new medium: photography.

Photography complemented—and competed with—old discursive methods of verbal description by bringing a visceral immediacy to an audience avid for images. Photographic images became the connective tissue binding the home front to the combat zone. And in a society anxious about its very survival, portraits of statesmen and generals provided reassuring testimony of steadfast character; Lincoln used photography to assert his leadership over a fractious polity. When Mathew Brady exhibited “The Dead of Antietam” in the fall of 1862, the horror and pity of war disoriented Americans. Sensation was replacing rationality in the public’s mind.

In the writings from The Atlantic and photographs from the National Portrait Gallery in the pages that follow, one can see a people grappling to make sense of life in the cauldron of war. And one can see, in hesitant and undeveloped ways, the emergence of the modern United States of America.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/toc/2012/02/

 The 50 Most Powerful Images From the Civil War

From lash marks on a slave's back to bombs bursting over Charleston, these pictures bring a turbulent era to life.

• JENNIE ROTHENBERG GRITZ AND GEOFFREY GAGNON
 
•  FEB 5, 2012
 
•  U.S.
• From lash marks on a slave's back to bombs bursting over Charleston, these pictures bring a turbulent era to life.

  Also See

  

  A Special Commemorative Issue of The Atlantic
  Photography came of age around the same time President Abraham Lincoln came to Washington. Abolitionists demonstrated the power of the new medium when they circulated a photo of a former slave with his head posed in dignified profile, welts covering his naked back. The New York Independent wrote, "This Card Photograph should be multiplied by the 100,000 and scattered over the states. It tells the story in a way that even Mrs. [Harriet Beecher] Stowe cannot approach, because it tells the story to the eye."
  For our recent Civil War commemorative issue, we partnered with the National Portrait Gallery and gathered dozens of photos and lithographs from before, during, and after the war. These images appear throughout the magazine, paired with classic Atlantic articles by writers like Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, and Louisa May Alcott. Viewed together in the gallery below, they tell a powerful story of their own.

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/02/the-50-most-powerful-images-from-the-civil-war/251998/

A group of slaves, photographed around the outbreak of war. Library of Congress

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A pair of former slaves, photographed after their escape. Across the South, in the years leading up to the war, the thought of slave uprisings struck fear in the hearts of slave-owners. (Corbis)

Our March to Washington - THEODORE WINTHROP - Filled with members of the New York elite, the Seventh New York Regiment, shown here while encamped in Washington, D.C., was often called the “silk-stocking regiment.” (Library of Congress)

The Advantages of Defeat - CHARLES ELIOT NORTON - The hastily dug graves left on the field after the Battle of Bull Run in July 1861 presaged the terrible fighting to come in the next four years. (Library of Congress)

Chiefly About War Matters, By a Peaceable Man - NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE - Shortly after the Union defeated Confederate forces at Antietam, Maryland, President Lincoln visited the battlefield to press General George McClellan (seen here facing the president) on his failure to pursue the retreating enemy. Weeks later, Lincoln would relieve the general of his command. (Alexander Gardner/National Portrait Gallery)

My Hunt After the Captain - OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES - With the war under way, the 1,000-bed Armory Square Hospital was erected on the National Mall to treat Washington’s influx of wounded soldiers. (Library of Congress)

The Man Without a Country - EDWARD EVERETT HALE - David Dixon Porter directed the Union’s Mississippi Squadron and was instrumental in the siege at Vicksburg, which broke Confederate control of the river. In this Alexander Gardner photograph, he poses aboard his ship, the Malvern. (Alexander Gardner/National Portrait Gallery)

The President’s Proclamation - President Lincoln, with his Cabinet, reading a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation in July 1862. (F.B. Carpenter, painter/A.H. Ritchie, engraver

In a scene typical of Southern plantation life around the time of the war, African Americans prepare cotton for a cotton gin. (Timothy H. O'Sullivan/Library of Congress)

Sojourner Truth, The Libyan Sibyl - HARRIET BEECHER STOWE - Photo cards like this one and copies of her autobiography served as Sojourner Truth’s main source of income.

The Story of a Year - HENRY JAMES - A Union soldier with the tattered colors of the Eighth Pennsylvania Infantry (Corbis)

Leaves From an Officer’s Journal - THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON - Black troops fighting for the Union in November 1864 in Dutch Gap, Virginia (Library of Congress)

The Words That Remade America - GARRY WILLS - In a rare image of President Lincoln at Gettysburg, he is shown hatless at the center of a crowd on the orators’ platform. (Library of Congress)

A Rebel’s Recollections - GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON - J. E. B. Stuart, the flamboyant Confederate commander of the cavalry in Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, in an 1863 portrait (George S. Cook/National Portrait Gallery)

Lee in Battle - GAMALIEL BRADFORD JR. - General Robert E. Lee, astride his beloved horse, Traveller. An officer serving under Lee once noted that the horse “always stepped as if conscious that he bore a king on his back.” (Corbis)

Toward Appomattox - JACK BEATTY - General Ulysses S. Grant, photographed by Mathew Brady at City Point in Virginia, June 1864. Brady gained permission to travel among the Union troops only after his wife reached out to Grant’s wife, petitioning on his behalf. (Mathew Brady/National Portrait Gallery)

Late Scenes in Richmond - CHARLES CARLETON COFFIN - Just after the Confederate government fled Richmond, President Lincoln made a surprise visit. The artist Lambert Hollis, who was on the scene, depicted crowds rushing to the president’s side in numbers that alarmed his bodyguards. Here Lincoln is holding the hand of his son Tad, who was celebrating his 12th birthday. (Lambert Hollis/National Portrait Gallery)

The End, and After - GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON - Four years after the war had started there, Charleston was in ruins in April 1865. “Any one who is not satisfied with war should go to Charleston,” General William Sherman said, “and he will pray louder and deeper than ever that, the country, in its long future be spared any more war.” (George N. Barnard/Library of Congress)

The Case of George Dedlow - SILAS WEIR MITCHELL - Union soldiers convalesce in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Before the war, the town was home to about 5,000 people. In May of 1864, after the battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, nearly 22,000 wounded men reportedly sought care there. (James Gardner/Library of Congress)

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/toc/2012/02/