Hutchins 1 Sara Hutchins History 1700 Professor Brooke Halford March 23, 2014 Document Analysis #4 NARA Civil

War Photograph Collection The Civil War began in 1861 after southern states began seceding from the Union and dissolving ties from the United States citing that their constitutional rights had been infringed upon and encroached by the federal government. Newly President, Abraham Lincoln believed that the only real option he had and the duty of President was to keep the Union whole, and to do that meant reabsorbing the seceded states back into the Union. The ensuing battles that raged between the Confederates and Unionists lasted until 1865 and caused an estimated 620,000 casualties on both sides not to mentions the millions of dollars of damage and debt that had been accrued during the war, it had a devastating impact on life not only during the war, but afterwards as well (Civil War Trust 2013, Online). The photograph I selected is titled, Confederate dead behind the stone wall of Marye's Heights, Fredericksburg, Va., killed during the Battle of Chancellorsville, May 1863, and was photographed by Captain Andrew J. Russell (Russell, Online Image). I picked this particular photo because it is kind of vulgar in its appearance and very abrupt in the way that it pulls an emotional response from the viewer. The picture is in black and white, per the time period, and there are dead Confederate soldiers lying in a ditch behind a short stone wall, weapons and debris strewn around and abandoned with the bodies, and what appears to be a small house in the distance. It is not a chaste picture and to me, it struck a chord that as the photographer was

Hutchins 2 witnessing the carnage and physical repercussions of the war and this particular battle, he decided to photograph the scene that was splayed before him at the Battle of Chancellorsville. The picture piqued my interest in the way that it is a very ugly and real representation of the costs of the Civil War and the fact that this picture is not censored and that you can see the soldier who is closest to the cameras face quite clearly, which is covered in blood makes it a quite impactful piece. An inference one could make from this particular photograph is that perhaps the battle being fought ended chaotically and caused whomever was fighting there to retreat quickly. The reason I came to that conjecture is in the way the debris in the photograph is strewn around and some items are haphazardly tossed about. However, it is interesting how the guns in the pictures are not all strewn around, a couple have been placed delicately against the short stone wall while others are positioned lying across the thin ditch where the bodies of the fallen soldiers are collected, perhaps the dead mens own guns left behind as a respectful tribute of some kind during a retreat. There are many pieces of cloth littering the ground and it does make me imagine men trying to use them as tourniquets for the wounded, and I cringe to think about what an experience that would have been. I see clearly in this photograph a strong presence of the consequence of battle, I see chaos and an ironically peaceful background of trees, clear sky, and a house that otherwise looks untouched. I think that Russell was conveying that this is what they were doing to each other; this is what was happening around them every day. To get more information about this photograph I was able to track down a book published by the photographs author, Andrew J. Russell from the Hunter Library in West Valley, Utah titled, Russells Civil War Photographs: 116 Historic Prints (Russell, 1861-65). Russell, whom I found out was a Captain in the Union army, photographed throughout the Civil War and

Hutchins 3 eventually was propositioned to photograph the railway lines for the Union Pacific Railroad. I believe that the collection of photographs Russell took during the Civil War can kind of put a mind frame around the causation for the taking of this photograph and also his particular style of photography. The war was incredibly traumatic and marked an incredibly dark period in United States history, and Russell was documenting the events and experiences he was having by taking official stills of it all. In some of his photos there are very innocent happenings, such as lines of men in the military all healthy and well; others were of landscape type photography, and then more gruesome pictures of dead soldiers lying vulnerable on the battle fields. These other photographs in Captain Andrew J. Russells collection lend some insight into his intent about officially chronicling the Civil War. This photograph adds to the account of the Civil War described in the textbook by being a visual account of the horrors faced on the battlefields, and in the textbook there is a paragraph which says, As the fighting intensified, they sought to kill enemy soldiers any way they could in order to hasten the wars end. At the same time, they became indifferent to death and suffering. The daily sight of blood and mangled bodies, observed a Rhode Island soldier, so blunted their finer sensibilities as almost to blot out all love, all sympathy from the heart. This hardening of attitudes produced a steady erosion of moral standards. Combatants began taking personal property from the dead and wounded and even prisoners after battle (Davidson, et al, 2011, 432). This paragraph does well to compliment the picture Russell took of the aftermath of the battle of Chancellorsville, and the almost dehumanization of the dead soldiers. The picture is gruesome and looking at after reading this paragraph it was easy to see the similarity and supposition

Hutchins 4 linking them together. Men were watching each other die in alarming rates, it makes sense that they were trying to dehumanize the enemy so as not to have to live with the reality of taking life as well as having to push on to survive and ignoring the bodies, both enemy and ally falling around you. Captain Andrew J. Russells impactful photograph was a big statement as to what men faced when they were fighting each other on the battlefields during the Civil War. When at last the war ended with General Robert E. Lees surrender at the Appomattox Courthouse to General Ulysses S. Grant in 1865, it was really only the beginning of what the United States now had to rebuild and mend between the Union and what had been the Confederacy in the south (Halford 2012, Online). This photograph is reminder of a time when our country was at war with itself and how things had the potential to be very different from what it is today had the Union not been successful, and also a reminder of how gruesome battle is no matter the good intentions that lay behind it.

Hutchins 5 Bibliography Andrew J. Russell. Confederate dead behind the stone wall of Marye's Heights, Fredericksburg, Va., killed during the Battle of Chancellorsville, May 1863. National Archives Photograph, Jpg[096] Online Image. http://www.archives.gov/research/military/civilwar/photos/images/civil-war-096.jpg. (Accessed March 19, 2014). Andrew J. Russell, Russells Civil War Photographs: 116 Historic Prints (Dover Publications April 1, 1982). (Accessed March 19, 2014. Hunter Library, West Valley). Civil War Trust, Civil War Facts: Saving Americas Civil War Battlefields. http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/faq/. (Accessed March 19, 2014). Halford Brooke, Unit 2: Chapter 16, March 19, 2014. James West Davidson, Brian DeLay, Christine Leigh Heyrman, Mark H. Lytle, and Michael B. Stoff. Experience History: Interpreting Americas Past. (United States: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 2011), 432. (Accessed March 19, 2014).