Published to coincide with the 150th anniverary of the battle of Gettysburg, features both familiar and rarely seen Civil War images from such photographers as George Barnard, Mathew Brady, and Timothy O'Sullivan.

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...

Few images of black Americans in the Civil War period exist or have survived, but now the granddaughter of a South Carolina slave has assembled the most comprehensive and significant collection of such rare images ever compiled. Bringing the truth of their daily lives to light, scenes of maternal affection, matrimony, war, and the grim reality of the master-slave relationship will help readers focus their perceptions of the black American experience in ways not otherwise available in modern history studies.

Lens of War grew out of an invitation to leading historians of the Civil War to select and reflect upon a single photograph. Each could choose any image and interpret it in personal and scholarly terms. The result is a remarkable set of essays by twenty-seven scholars whose numerous volumes on the Civil War have explored military, cultural, political, African American, women's, and environmental history. The essays describe a wide array of photographs and present an eclectic approach to the assignment, organized by topic: Leaders, Soldiers, Civilians, Victims, and Places. Readers will rediscover familiar photographs and figures examined in unfamiliar ways, as well as discover little-known photographs that afford intriguing perspectives. All the images are reproduced with exquisite care. Readers fascinated by the Civil War will want this unique book on their shelves, and lovers of photography will value the images and the creative, evocative reflections offered in these essays. Contributors: Stephen Berry, William A. Blair, Stephen Cushman, Gary W. Gallagher, J. Matthew Gallman, Judith A. Giesberg, Joseph T. Glatthaar, Thavolia Glymph, Earl J. Hess, Harold Holzer, Caroline E. Janney, James Marten, Kathryn Shively Meier, Megan Kate Nelson, Susan Eva O'Donovan, T. Michael Parrish, Ethan S. Rafuse, Carol Reardon, James I. Robertson Jr., Jane E. Schultz, Aaron Sheehan-Dean, Brooks D. Simpson, Daniel E. Sutherland, Emory M. Thomas, Elizabeth R. Varon, Joan Waugh, Steven E. Woodworth.

This volume contains one hundred of the greatest war pictures ever taken. Union troops in battle, Lincoln at Antietam, the ruins of Richmond, Lee's surrender at Appomattox, and more. It became the Civil War's best-known visual record and helped define how viewers would come to know the war. This classic also became foundational in the history of American photography, combining, for the first time, words and images in a sophisticated and moving account.

In 1861, the art of photography came of age just as Civil War erupted and tore the United States apart. As a result, more than 2,000 photographers covered the conflict, making it the first historical event captured fully by the camera. Noted historian William C. Davis has chosen the finest of these images, enhancing the pictures with illuminating text that places them in context. Many of these evocative photos are rarely seen, and portray not only the battles and their tragic aftermath, but also the people caught in the devastation. "

Great Photographs of the Civil War brings together in one volume the most evocative Civil War photographs ever published. The images--selected by Time Life editors from thousands of photographs preserved in museums and collections around the country--tell the epic story of a nation divided. Reflected here are the tireless efforts of pioneering photographers who used heavy equipment and portable darkrooms mounted on wagon beds to record this fateful struggle. The editors have assembled 300 gripping images, some of them recognized classics and others rarely seen, into 20 chronological photo essays. Here, the crucial events of the war, from the bloodiest day at Antietam and the Confederate high tide at Gettysburg to the battles for Atlanta and the climactic siege of Petersburg, are conveyed with power and precision in the defining photographs of the conflict that redefined our nation.