"Rare, eerie photos of the Civil War from Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner"

[Linda Anderson]

(04-12-2015 01:07 PM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  

(04-10-2015 10:42 PM)Linda Anderson Wrote:  "We now look back at the Civil War with a curious fascination detached from the gruesome reality of the death and destruction afforded us by the 150 years that have passed.

"Much of what we know about the conflict comes from the pioneering work of a small group of early photographers.

"In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln himself granted permission to allow a Washington photographer access to battle sites to document the war.

"That photographer, Matthew Brady, and his employees, including Alexander Gardner, documented warfare in a way that almost no one had done before."

http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/150-y...186407.php

Thanks Linda. Your first statement is so 100% correct. I own the much acclaimed Ken Burn's "Civil War" and that is the very reason I cannot sit through each episode of it...I have to skip some of them. It's tempting to romanticize the events of 150 years ago and forget how truly horrible the whole thing was. It bears repeating...War Is Hell.

You're welcome, Toia. The statements are by CT Post reporter Chris Preovolos although I agree with him, too. Sometimes I think we can only grasp how horrible war is in little bits and pieces. For example, Thomas Goodrich writes in The Darkest Dawn about a Mrs. Stuart, a Southern woman who refused to drape her house in black after Lincoln's death. The story is recounted by her friend.

The "'squad of Northern boys [who] organized themselves into an inspection committee'" demanded that Mrs. Stuart drape her house.

"'What, I show a sign of mourning for Abraham Lincoln-I, who but for him would not be husbandless and childless today!' came from Mrs. Stuart's lips."

They searched her house for something black and discovered the "long crape veil;...the veil that she had worn as a widow for her husband...[and] her son." They told her to hang it or her "'life won't be worth a candle...'

"'She stared at them for a few seconds with eyes in which hate, horror and revenge strove for mastery.'" She then agreed to hang the veil but told everyone to wait across the street. When she came out onto the veranda she was dressed in her '''mourning weeds.'" She climbed a chair with the veil "'wound once about her neck... then she took the veil... and threw it through the opening, while at the same time she put something else through. What it was we could not tell at that distance, and then...she gave her chair a vigorous push with her foot and her body hung suspended in mid-air. Several seconds elapsed, in which we all stood as if frozen to the spot, staring at that dangling body across the street. Then, with a cry of horror... we rushed over...[But] it was too late.

"'Under that crepe veil, with a strong cord firmly knotted about her neck, hung all that was mortal of that once proud southern woman.'"