Medford Moments

May 6: Image #6 is Confederate Gen. Joe Wheeler.

May 13: Image #7 is a shot of the vessels Missonary, Lookout, and Wauhatchie at a wharf on the Tennessee River in Chattanooga, with Lookout Mountain in the background.

May 20: Image #8 is a picture of Grant and his staff from left to right. The image was taken on the east lawn of the Appomattox Manor (Epps Mansion) on the James River.

May 27: Image #9 is Fort Gaines at Tenleytown, Maryland.

June 3: Image #10 is an image of the “slave pen” at Price, Birch and Company, Dealers in Slaves, in Alexandria, Virginia, at 1315 Duke Street. It was used as a provost marshal jail during the Civil War.

June 10: Image #11 is Gen. Benjamin M. Prentiss.

June 17: Image #12 is the 17th New York in camp at Fort Cocoran, Virginia, near Miners Hill, outside of Washington.

June 24: Image #13 is a CDV of James Longstreet.

July 1: Image #14 is a view north along Bloody Lane looking toward the 6th Georgia’s position at the left elbow bend at Antietam.

July 8: Image #15 is still unidentified—take another look here, but for more than 140 years it remains lost to history.

July 15: Image #16 is Lulu Falls on Lookout Mountain Tennessee. It appears to have been a late fall or winter shot after the attack and capture of Confederate positions.

July 22: Image #17 is Gen. Richard Taylor, son of former President Zachary Taylor.

July 29: Image #18 is an artillery depot at Broadway Landing on the Appomattox River near the end of the war in 1865.

 

MAY

Photo 1: An encampment image of the 21st Michigan Company B. These are veterans of Sherman’s western campaign. Clearly a staged photograph.

Photo 2: The construction of a defensive stockade in Alexandria, Virginia. The soldier to the far left of the image appears to be Confederate with a weapon stock on the ground supervising black laborers whose status (enslaved or free are unknown). Their clothing appears in a very good state of repair. It is labeled 1864, so there is an incongruence in the interpretation.

Photo 3: The Octagon House in Arlington, Virginia, which was used as Gen. Irwin McDowell’s headquarters in 1862. Note the ladder to the roof that could have been an intelligence or signal post.

Photo 4: A distant image of Robert E. Lee’s home Arlington, Virginia. Today, of course, the foreground would be decorated with the graves of America’s veterans as this is America’s premier national cemetery.

Photo 5: George Bernard’s image of the destroyed Atlanta Roundhouse in late 1864. You can see the burned buildings from the evacuation and the subsequent razing of the town that Sherman turned into an armed military camp after his occupation. Two steam engines are identified “Telegraph” and the “OA Bull.” Note African-Americans standing on the flatcar.

Photo 6: Monument to Union soldiers in Saltonstall Park, in Watertown, Massachusetts; the Grant School is in the background. This monument was fabricated by Hallowell Granite Company of Maine. The company profited from building many monuments in the postwar period. Italian scupltors were hired to do the stone cutting.

Photo 7: From the Kansas Pacific Railroad at Fort Mojave in the Arizona territory. It features Mojave braves posing with their Chief Sicihoot. The image was shot by Alexander Gardner’s photographic team in 1868.

Photo 8: The ruins of the Widow Judith Henry’s House where she died and which was damaged in the first battle of Manassas in July 1861. The balance of the ruined house was stripped for firewood after the battle. These remains burned to the ground after the second battle of Manassas in September 1862. Shot by George Barnard in March 1862.

Photo 9: A lovely but still unidentified woman.

Photo 10: A view of the fields of encampment outside of Culpeper, Virginia. Both Confederate and Union armies camped here preparatory to military operations in 1862, 1863, and 1864.

Photo 11: An image of Lee & Gordon’s Mill outside and south of Chickamauga battlefield. This was Rosecrans’s headquarters prior to the great battle in September 1863. In May 1864, Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson started from this point in his flanking move at Snake Creek Gap west of Resaca in the early stages of the Atlanta Campaign.

Photo 12: The CSS Chickamauga on the Cape Fear River, originally used as a blockade runner, the Edith. In September 1864 the army tried to commandeer her for a troop and supply transport. In October 1864 she put to sea as a Confederate raider and sailed to the entrance to Long Island Sound and then on to Bermuda for repairs and coaling. She returned to Wilmington three weeks later. Her sailors helped man guns at Fort Fisher and she was burned in the Cape Fear River in late February 1865 to prevent capture.

Photo 13: A monument to “Herveor of Tripoli” (during the war with the Barbary pirates near Libya), placed at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1860. Previously displayed on the west terrace grounds of the U.S. Capitol. This is the oldest military monument in the United States. It was carved in 1806 in Italy and carried as ballast on Old Ironsides (the USS Constitution).

Photo 14: The displayed flag of the Second U.S. Artillery, Battery D Army of the Potomac. It measured 3 feet by 4 feet with 2 inches of gold fringe with red fields and battle honors painted in gold or yellow paint. The center of the flag has crossed cannon. The flags were widely circulated in the eastern armies in late 1863 and early 1864.

Photo 1: Yorktown Customs House, headquarters of Gen. John B. Magruder, shot after May 1862 by George Barnard.

Photo 2: The high-water mark at Gettysburg; note the copse of trees in the background. It is believed this is from a reunion of Lawrence, Massachusetts, Civil War veterans in May 1899.

Photo 3: This is a part of the Chickamauga Battlefield near Rossville Gap, leading back to Chattanooga; you see a building ruin in the foreground.

Photo 4: The Lewis House on the Manassas Battlefield, shot by George Barnard in 1861 or 1862. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Photo 5: This is the Poison Spring on the 1862 battlefield of Chickasaw Bayou ,shot by William Redish in 1864. Note the bucket in the foreground where fresh water was taken for use or consumption.

Photo 6: Andrew Russell’s 1861 image of Beauregard’s headquarters (Liberia) at Manassas. The house was owned by William J. Weir.

Photo 7: A widely published image of a dead confederate soldier at Fort Mahone, Virginia, believed to have been shot April 3, 1865.

Photo 8: The Arch of Sacrifice at the entry to the campsite of the 44th NY Infantry outside of Alexandria, Virginia.

Photo 9: The famous 13″ mortar “Dictator” on a railroad track just outside the Confederate lines at Petersburg.

Photo 10: The lesser known Confederate general Harry Hayes, who fought in the Army of Northern Virginia.

Photo 11: The Western and Atlantic Railroad passing through Altoona Pass. Fortifications were present on the high ground on either side of the pass. George Barnard shot this postwar image in 1866.

Photo 12: A fading CDV image of Capt. John A. Winslow, who commanded the USS Kearsarge, which sunk the Confederate raider Alabama on June 19, 1864, outside the breakwaters of Cherbourg, France. Photographed by Josiah Johnson Hawes.

Photo 13: Eight Union band members with instruments.

Photo 14: The White House on the Pamunkey River. This was the home of George Washington’s wife, Martha Dandridge, and at the time of the Civil War was owned by Robert E. Lee.

Photo 1: In the foreground was the gunboat Agawam and in midstream (James River) is the monitor Saugus.

Photo 2: A prewar image of Maj. Thomas Jackson, known to history as Stonewall. This is after the Mexican War and he had been promoted major by brevet.

Photo 3: The Christian mission in Richmond, Virginia. These philanthropic organizations worked within hospitals and prisons to alleviate the suffering of incapacitated soldiers while paying attention to their spiritual needs often providing printed materials for prayer and reflection

Photo 4: The Grand Review in 1865, the march toward the White House along Pennsylvania Avenue. Note the U.S. Capitol in the distance.

Photo 5: Union Brig. Gen. William Belknap with two enlisted men—most likely keepsake or old Grip and Grin photographs for posterity as the armies were dissolving. These provided keepsakes most likely for the enlisted men.

Photo 6: This is clearly a railroad hotel at the large railroad yard near Chattanooga.

Photo 7: The railroad shelf around the base of Lookout Mountain outside Chattanooga. Today I-24 runs parallel to the tracks which are still there. The Tennessee River laps up to the shore on the right. That has been filled in modern time to accommodate the modern road.

Photo 8: The Thomas Nelson House in Yorktown, Virginia, it was used as Lord Cornwallis’s headquarters in 1781 and was a central structure in the town of Yorktown during the April 1862 siege by General McClellan.

Photo 9: This post Wilderness battles shot on the high ground above Fredericksburg features mostly ambulatory soldiers awaiting further processing. The label is “wounded Indian sharpshooters”—that doesn’t ring right with me and it is certainly in need of further documentation.

Photo 10: The Bank of the Old Dominion at Alexandria, Virginia. In May 1861 this building was commandeered for Union army headquarters. After the July battle of Manassas, this building was used to triage wounded soldiers. Throughout the war, it had various other functions in both the Quartermaster and Commissary departments. After the war the trustees of the bank, which had gone out of business in 1862, were able to redeem the deposits of their stockholders from a hidden cache of money that was recovered after the war ended.

Photo 11: The chair Lincoln was sitting in at Ford’s Theater on the night he was assassinated. The upper portion appears to be blood stained.

Photo 12: Andrew Russell’s photo of Union soldiers in camp on the west side of the Rappahannock River. In several days they would launch a diversionary attack against Fredericksburg to distract from General Hooker’s turning movement and the pending battle at Chancellorsville. Believed to have been shot between April 29 and May 2.

Photo 13: Confederate prisoners in a compound at Belle Plain along the Potomac River awaiting transport to prisons in the north.

Photo 14: A postwar image of the dashing Confederate Gen. John Gordon. His memoir is biased but readable. He held leadership positions in every postwar office from the governorship of Georgia to the United Confederate Veterans and the KKK.

Photo 15: A Union drummer boy, Gilbert Marburg of Company H 22nd New York State Militia. The image was shot at Harpers Ferry in 1862.