Original Photographs Taken on the Battlefields during the Civil War of the United States (Illustrations)


Book Description

This is undoubtedly the most valuable collection of historic photographs in America. It is believed to be the first time that the camera was used so extensively and practically on the battle-field. It is the first known collection of its size on the Western Continent and it is the only witness of the scenes enacted during the greatest crisis in the annals of the American nation. As a contribution to history it occupies a position that the higher art of painting, or scholarly research and literal description, can never usurp. It records a tragedy that neither the imagination of the painter nor the skill of the historian can so dramatically relate. The existence of this collection is unknown by the public at large. Even while this book has been in preparation eminent photographers have pronounced it impossible, declaring that photography was not sufficiently advanced at that period to prove of such practical use in War. Distinguished veterans of the Civil War have informed me that they knew positively that there were no cameras in the wake of the army. This incredulity of men in a position to know the truth enhances the value of the collection inasmuch that its genuineness is officially proven by the testimony of those who saw the pictures taken, by the personal statement of the man who took them, and by the Government Records. For forty-two years the original negatives have been in storage, secreted from public view, except as an occasional proof is drawn for some special use. How these negatives came to be taken under most hazardous conditions in the storm and stress of a War that threatened to change the entire history of the world is itself an interesting historical incident. Moreover, it is one of the tragedies of genius. While the clouds were gathering, which finally broke into the Civil War in the United States, there died in London one named Scott-Archer, a man who had found one of the great factors in civilization, but died poor and before his time because he had overstrained his powers in the cause of science. It was necessary to raise a subscription for his widow, and the government settled upon the children a pension of fifty pounds per annum on the ground that their father was "the discoverer of a scientific process of great value to the nation, from which the inventor had reaped little or no benefit." This was in 1857, and four years later, when the American Republic became rent by a conflict of brother against brother, Mathew B. Brady of Washington and New York, asked the permission of the Government and the protection of the Secret Service to demonstrate the practicability of Scott-Archer's discovery in the severest test that the invention had ever been given. Brady was an artist by temperament and gained his technical knowledge of portraiture in the rendezvous of Paris. He had been interested in the discoveries of Niepce and Daguerre and Fox-Talbot along the crude lines of photography but with the introduction of the collodion process of Scott-Archer he accepted the science as a profession and, during twenty-five years of labor as a pioneer photographer, took the likenesses of the political celebrities of the epoch and of eminent men and women throughout the country. Brady's request was granted and he invested heavily in cameras which were made specially for the hard usage of warfare. These cameras were cumbersome and were operated by what is known as the old wet-plate process, requiring a dark room which was carried with them onto the battle-fields. The experimental operations under Brady proved so successful that they attracted the immediate attention of President Lincoln, General Grant and Allan Pinkerton, known as Major Allen and chief of the Secret Service. Equipments were hurried to all divisions of the great army and some of them found their way into the Confederate ranks. To be continue in this ebook...




Original Photographs Taken on the Battlefields during the Civil War of the United States


Book Description

Francis Trevelyan Miller's 'Original Photographs Taken on the Battlefields during the Civil War of the United States' is a poignant portrayal of the brutality and sacrifice of the Civil War. Through stunning original photographs, Miller captures the raw emotions and devastation of this pivotal moment in American history. The book is written in a straightforward and informative style, providing a detailed look at the battles and the individuals involved. It serves as a visual documentation of the horrors of war, making it a valuable resource for historians and Civil War enthusiasts alike. Miller's work stands out in the literary context for its unique combination of photography and storytelling, bringing the past to life in a way that is both engaging and educational. As a renowned historian and photographer, Miller's expertise shines through in every page of this remarkable book. 'Original Photographs Taken on the Battlefields during the Civil War of the United States' is a must-read for those interested in gaining a deeper understanding of this tumultuous period in American history.




Blue & Gray Magazine


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Beyond the Sunset


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In Beyond the Sunset, the sixth novel in Ron Shafer's There Is a River saga, two cultures repeatedly collide. Jude and Cory's world of love, embodied in their beautiful wedding and honeymoon, clashes with the world of the carnal thugs. The intelligent Todd Cravener, pitifully caught in the crossfire between the two worlds, deals with the overwhelming guilt of his girlfriend's death. Is there hope for such misdirected people who botch their lives so completely? In the words of one reader, "Todd is like many people today--forlorn, hopeless, and scared!" The lives of the antagonists and the protagonists of these two worlds crisscross in a series of breath-taking episodes which build to a riveting climax during Kittanning's Light-up Night when the inebriated stooges kidnap two innocent people. "That," a reader shares, "is one of the most suspenseful scenes I've read in modern fiction! My pulse soared!" Will the daring rescue scheme succeed?




Civil War


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Seen the Glory


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Volunteering for the Union upon the outbreak of the Civil War, brothers Luke and Thomas Chandler, the sons of an abolitionist father from Martha's Vineyard, find their service marked by a secret that Luke shares with the family's African-American housekeeper.




Pennsylvania at Gettysburg


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Homelands and Waterways


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This monumental history traces the rise of a resolute African American family (the author's own) from privation to the middle class. In doing so, it explodes the stereotypes that have shaped and distorted our thinking about African Americans--both in slavery and in freedom. Beginning with John Robert Bond, who emigrated from England to fight in the Union Army during the Civil War and married a recently freed slave, Alexander shows three generations of Bonds as they take chances and break new ground. From Victorian England to antebellum Virginia, from Herman Melville's New England to the Jim Crow South, from urban race riots to the battlefields of World War I, this fascinating chronicle sheds new light on eighty crucial years in our nation's troubled history. The Bond family's rise from slavery, their interaction with prominent figures such as W. E. B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, and their eventual, uneasy realization of the American dream shed a great deal of light on our nation's troubled heritage.




Gettysburg


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Winner of the Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History An Economist Best Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year The Battle of Gettysburg has been written about at length and thoroughly dissected in terms of strategic importance, but never before has a book taken readers so close to the experience of the individual soldier. Two-time Lincoln Prize winner Allen C. Guelzo shows us the face, the sights and the sounds of nineteenth-century combat: the stone walls and gunpowder clouds of Pickett’s Charge; the reason that the Army of Northern Virginia could be smelled before it could be seen; the march of thousands of men from the banks of the Rappahannock in Virginia to the Pennsylvania hills. What emerges is a previously untold story of army life in the Civil War: from the personal politics roiling the Union and Confederate officer ranks, to the peculiar character of artillery units. Through such scrutiny, one of history’s epic battles is given extraordinarily vivid new life.




Army Life in Virginia


Book Description

George G. Benedict was one of thousands of young men who enlisted for the Union cause in the late summer of 1862 when the outcome of the Civil War was yet to be decided. But in addition to his duties as a soldier, Benedict also worked as a correspondent for his hometown newspaper, the Burlington (Vermont) Free Press. Benedict's thirty-one letters gave the folks back home a firsthand account of army life in the Civil War. Now, by supplementing these letters with official documents, newspaper accounts, and comrade's letters, editor Eric Ward expands on this account, providing a fuller and more accurate picture of army life in Virginia.