BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: Faces of Discord -- Confederate Sketches of Adalbert Volck

DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: Faces of Discord -- Confederate Sketches of Adalbert Volck:

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Description of Pictures: The Confederate Sketches of Adalbert Volck
March 30, 2012 through January 21, 2013
The Confederate Sketches of Adalbert Volck is the second in our series of exhibitions marking the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. Having emigrated to the United States in 1848 after Germany’s failed revolution, Volck settled in Baltimore. Unusual for the politically liberal émigrés, Volck sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War.
A dentist by trade, Volck served the Southern cause in a myriad of ways, including smuggling medical supplies to Virginia across the Potomac River. However, Volck’s most significant contribution to the Confederate cause was his production of pictorial propaganda that vilified Lincoln, abolitionists and Union soldiers in his publication Sketches from the Civil War in North America.
The exhibition will include many of his original etchings and lithographs as well as a copper plate used to print one of the drawings in the publication. James Barber, NPG Historian, serves as curator.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. FDVOLC_120404_06.JPG: Engraving plate used to make Marylanders Crossing the Potomac to Join the Southern Army, 1863
2. FDVOLC_120404_10.JPG: Passage through Baltimore: In Adalbert Volck's hands, President Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, became the devil incarnate, among lesser villains. In this print Volck ridicules Lincoln for making a secret passage by train through Baltimore in late February 1861. During this journey to Washington for his inauguration, Lincoln had been warned of a possible assassination plot in Baltimore, a city with strong southern sentiments. He was advised to pass through quietly, under cover of night, and he reluctantly heeded the advice. After Lincoln became president without incident, he regretted having made an unannounced and guarded arrival in the nation's capital. Etching, 1863
3. FDVOLC_120404_16.JPG: Worship of the North: Adalbert Volck began his Sketches from the Civil War with this comprehensive indictment of the Union cause, titled Worship of the North. Gathered around an altar built of bricks labeled "Puritanism," "Witchburning," "Negro Worship," and "Free Love" are a host of villains responsible for the crusade against the South. As a devil-like Lincoln presides to the right of the altar, abolitionist clergyman Henry Ward Beecher directs his knife toward the white victim being sacrificed to a black idol. While New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley swings incense in the left corner and, behind him, Republican senator Charles Sumner holds a torch to guide Beecher's knife, a crowd of other northern luminaries looks solemnly and prayerfully on. Underscoring the Confederacy's commonly held conviction that the North was making war on the South as much for profit as for slave liberation, overfed representatives of "The Holy Cause of the Contractors" stand barely visible in the far right background. Etching, 1863 Sitter: Henry Ward Beecher, 24 Jun 1813 - 8 Mar 1887 Sitter: Charles Sumner, 6 Jan 1811 - 11 Mar 1874 Sitter: Horace Greeley, 3 Feb 1811 - 29 Nov 1872 Sitter: Benjamin Franklin Butler, 5 Nov 1818 - 11 Jan 1893 Sitter: John Charles Frémont, 21 Jan 1813 - 13 Jul 1890 Sitter: William Henry Seward, 16 May 1801 - 15 Oct 1872 Sitter: Edwin McMasters Stanton, 19 Dec 1814 - 24 Dec 1869 Sitter: Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe, 14 Jun 1811 - 1 Jul 1896 Sitter: Ambrose Everett Burnside, 23 May 1824 - 13 Sep 1881 Sitter: James Henry Lane, 22 Jun 1814 - 11 Jul 1866 Sitter: John Albion Andrew, 31 May 1818 - 30 Oct 1867 Sitter: John Brown, 9 May 1800 - 2 Dec 1859 Sitter: Winfield Scott, 13 Jun 1786 - 29 May 1866 Sitter: David Hunter, 1802 - 1886
4. FDVOLC_120404_21.JPG: Scene in Stonewall Jackson's Camp: Soldierly discipline and an almost fanatical devotion to the Presbyterian faith were two legendary aspects of the Civil War career of Confederate general Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. The bowed heads and pious demeanor of the soldiers in this etching titled Scene in Stonewall Jackson's Camp suggest the religious services and prayer meetings that were held daily within Jackson's Second Corps, especially during the early months of 1863. No commander in the field did more to invoke the need for divine providence in military operations than Jackson. Jackson never had enough chaplains in his ranks to minister to the troops, in spite of his efforts to recruit them. Etching, 1863
5. FDVOLC_120404_25.JPG: Marylanders Crossing the Potomac to Join the Southern Army: Adalbert Volck's adopted state of Maryland was a border state lying between the Mason-Dixon Line to the North and the Potomac River to the South, two symbolic demarcations separating the country. While the northern border was more ideological in significance, the Potomac truly presented a physical barrier between the Union and Confederacy, as seen in this lithograph. Transfer lithograph, 1864
6. FDVOLC_120404_30.JPG: Smuggling Medicines into the South: The practice of medicine during the Civil War was crude, but advances were being made. Ether and chloroform were routinely used as anesthesia prior to surgery, for example. But as with other commodities, medical supplies were more scarce in the South than in the North. This lithograph depicts Confederates smuggling medicines, perhaps across the Potomac from Maryland or from a point farther south. The boat is a reminder that many goods had to be smuggled into the Confederacy because of the Union blockade of the seaports, which increasingly prevented trade as the war progressed. Transfer lithograph, 1864
7. FDVOLC_120404_36.JPG: General Stuart's Raid to the White House [Virginia]: In June 1862, during the Peninsula Campaign in Virginia, General Jeb Stuart led his Confederate cavalry on a raid around General George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac, cutting Union communication lines from the army's large supply base near White House, Virginia, on the Pamunkey River. Stuart was able to disrupt Union operations while providing Robert E. Lee with valuable intelligence about enemy movements. The raid was a boost to southern morale after Confederate losses at New Orleans and Shiloh, Tennessee, in April. In this scene, Volck depicts Stuart's troops plundering Yankee supplies. Etching, 1863
8. FDVOLC_120404_45.JPG: Cave Life in Vicksburg: On July 4, 1863, when Ulysses S. Grant captured Vicksburg, Mississippi, it ended a yearlong campaign and put control of the Mississippi River firmly in Union hands. A siege lasting forty-seven days, in which some 200 Federal cannons pounded the city daily, drove many residents into caves dug in the hillsides that were furnished with household possessions, as seen in this sketch. "And so the weary days went on," recalled one matronly cave-dweller, "when we could not tell in what terrible form death might come to us before the sun went down." Transfer lithograph, 1864
9. FDVOLC_120404_48.JPG: Free Negroes in the North: In this sketch Volck satirizes the lives of "free negroes" in the North. The well-dressed man in the center offers a tract on slavery to a beggar instead of alms, while nearby, a physician bargains with two black men over a dead body, probably to be used for dissection. They stand just outside a "Colored Home," in which scenes of riot and orgy are taking place. Volck, in the most graphic way, raised questions that seemed to ask if free blacks in the North were really better off than slaves in the South. Transfer lithograph, 1864
10. FDVOLC_120404_53.JPG: Tracks of the Armies: Perhaps Volck's most heart-wrenching sketch, Tracks of the Armies portrayed Confederate veterans who returned to their families, only to find their loved ones missing or dead, and their homes in ruins. Etching, 1863
11. FDVOLC_120404_56.JPG: Letter from Adalbert Volck, January 21, 1900: In this letter Volck wrote in 1900, he explained the motivations for his Confederate sketches. He noted that he worked at nights and in secret and attempted to be accurate in his depictions, based on what he saw and experienced, especially when he had the chance to travel in the South. In a letter Volck wrote to the Library of Congress five years later, he made a surprising admission: that his "greatest regret ever was to have aimed ridicule at that great and good Lincoln -- outside of that the pictures represent events as truthfully as my close connection with the South enabled me to get at them."
12. FDVOLC_120407_003.JPG: Adalbert Volck self-portrait During and after the Civil War, Volck continued to earn his livelihood from his dental practice in Baltimore, where he was well-known in the city's social circles. He never lost his interest in the arts or the southern cause. Like his younger brother, Frederick, he turned to sculpting, working in woods and metals. A silver relief he made and dedicated to the "Brave Women of the South" was presented to Richmond's Museum of the Confederacy in 1909. The National Portrait Gallery acquired this tin relief self-portrait in 1972. Tin relief, c. 1900
13. FDVOLC_120407_013.JPG: Battle in Baltimore, April 19, 1861 In response to President Abraham Lincoln's call for 75,000 state militia in the wake of the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter, South Carolina, the Sixth Massachusetts Volunteer Militia arrived by train in Baltimore on April 19, 1861, en route to Washington for its defense. Their unannounced presence in the city drew the ire of southern sympathizers, and a riot ensued, leaving four soldiers and twelve civilians dead. As the regiment marched along Pratt Street to board railroad cars for Washington, one soldier recalled being "immediately assailed with stones, clubs and missiles" from the angry mob. Volck depicted the melee in this lithograph, in which the central figure has drawn a sword from a cane and is ready to strike. Transfer lithograph, 1864
14. FDVOLC_120407_021.JPG: Occupation of Ye Wicked City of Baltimore Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts was a savvy lawyer and politician with high aspirations for military command during the Civil War. He was also one of the personalities whom Volck targeted for some of his severest satire. In the spring of 1861, Butler was commanding the Eighth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, one of the first regiments to respond to President Lincoln's call for state militia. Without authorization, he assumed command of Union militia near Baltimore and occupied the city. Butler would continue to be a maverick and overstep his orders as the war progressed. In this satire, Volck depicts Butler as drunk, bungling, and in need of assistance from his soldiers to mount his horse. Lithograph, c. 1862
15. FDVOLC_120407_025.JPG: Making Clothes for the Boys in the Army Making clothing for soldiers was a common practice for women in both the North and South. Here, Volck depicts the process of making homespun apparel in a family setting, with a grandmother spinning flax into thread, a mother at the loom weaving the thread into cloth, and a daughter sewing the cloth into a military garment. Transfer lithograph, 1864
16. FDVOLC_120407_033.JPG: The American Cyclops. the Hero of New Orleans, and Spoiler of Silver Spoons At the start of the war, President Lincoln, desperate to find able officers, appointed Benjamin F. Butler, a major general of Union volunteers. Butler, however, was a political general and proved to be largely ill-suited for military command. Ultimately, General Ulysses S. Grant requested his removal late in the war, and Lincoln sent Butler back to his home in Massachusetts. In this portfolio containing twelve sketches, Volck ridicules Butler's war service, especially his brief tenure as the military governor of New Orleans in 1862. There, Butler was accused of overstepping his authority, to the point of allegedly pilfering silver spoons from the houses he inhabited.
17. FDVOLC_120407_046.JPG: Searching for Arms Union occupation of southern locales often made life difficult for residents, especially those who did not fly the American flag. Volck's city of Baltimore was occupied early in the war -- beginning in May 1861 -- and in this etching he depicts one of the hardships southern sympathizers endured. Northern troops would enter homes of secessionists in search of firearms and sewing machines; the latter were routinely destroyed to prevent their use for outfitting Confederate soldiers. Volck suggests that the intruding soldiers have dislodged the family from their beds; the mother comforts her frightened daughter while draping a curtain around their nightclothes. Soldiers keep the father from entering the room, while the officer in the foreground holds up a miniature Confederate flag, the only fruit in their search for arms. Etching, 1863
18. FDVOLC_120407_054.JPG: Slaves Concealing Their Master from a Search Party Volck imagines a look inside a slave hut as the master, holding a pistol, hides behind the front door while an enslaved woman diverts inquisitive Yankee soldiers in another direction. Etching, 1863
19. FDVOLC_120407_065.JPG: Offering the Bells to be Cast into Cannon The resources of the agricultural South by and large were scarce compared to the ample supplies of goods enjoyed in the industrial North. The South had less of everything, from table salt to weapons, as depicted in this sketch. A clergyman offers up the bells from his church, seen in the background, to a Confederate officer so that the metal, preferably bronze, could be cast into cannons. As seen in the lower left corner, the townspeople also donated andirons, kettles, and candlesticks to the southern cause. Transfer lithograph, 1864
20. FDVOLC_120407_071.JPG: Formation of Guerrilla Bands Guerrilla bands like those in Missouri and Kansas were almost always composed of civilians who waged attacks, often in retribution, against enemy soldiers and the citizens who supported them. The South's most notorious guerrilla leader was William C. Quantrill, who led a vengeful raid against the Union population of Lawrence, Kansas, in August 1863, the year this etching was made. Volck depicts here, amid a scene of destruction, a guerrilla's attempt to recruit a new member, prying him away from his wife, child, and ruined dwelling. Etching, 1863
21. FDVOLC_120407_076.JPG: Valiant Men "Dat Fite Mit Sigel" German-born Franz Sigel was one of several political generals whose Civil War service proved to be largely ineffective and worrisome to President Lincoln. Sigel aroused the spite of Adalbert Volck for his foibles on the battlefield. And despite their shared Germanic ancestry, Volck and Sigel had different views of American patriotism. Sigel, however, did prove to be useful in recruiting German immigrants, many of whom could speak little English. "I'm going to fight mit Sigel" became a favorite wartime slogan and song. Volck satirizes Sigel and his "valiant men" as they harass and draw their weapons on women and children whom they have just made destitute by burning their homes. Transfer lithograph, 1864
22. FDVOLC_120407_086.JPG: The Emancipation Proclamation This satirical sketch casts President Lincoln in league with the devil as he drafts the Emancipation Proclamation. Signed on New Year's Day 1863, the proclamation freed all slaves in the Confederate states. The pictures on the wall purport to show Lincoln in sympathy with radical abolitionist John Brown and with the bloody slave revolt that took place in Santo Domingo at the turn of the nineteenth century. Transfer lithograph, 1864
23. FDVOLC_120407_118.JPG: Psssage through Baltimore In Adalbert Volck's hands, President Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, became the devil incarnate, among lesser villains. In this print Volck ridicules Lincoln for making a secret passage by train through Baltimore in late February 1861. During this journey to Washington for his inauguration, Lincoln had been warned of a possible assassination plot in Baltimore, a city with strong southern sentiments. He was advised to pass through quietly, under cover of night, and he reluctantly heeded the advice. After Lincoln became president without incident, he regretted having made an unannounced and guarded arrival in the nation's capital. Etching, 1863
24. FDVOLC_120407_127.JPG: Worship of the North Adalbert Volck began his Sketches from the Civil War with this comprehensive indictment of the Union cause, titled Worship of the North. Gathered around an altar built of bricks labeled "Puritanism," "Witchburning," "Negro Worship," and "Free Love" are a host of villains responsible for the crusade against the South. As a devil-like Lincoln presides to the right of the altar, abolitionist clergyman Henry Ward Beecher directs his knife toward the white victim being sacrificed to a black idol. While New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley swings incense in the left corner and, behind him, Republican senator Charles Sumner holds a torch to guide Beecher's knife, a crowd of other northern luminaries looks solemnly and prayerfully on. Underscoring the Confederacy's commonly held conviction that the North was making war on the South as much for profit as for slave liberation, overfed representatives of "The Holy Cause of the Contractors" stand barely visible in the far right background. Etching, 1863
25. FDVOLC_120407_146.JPG: Marylanders Crossing the Potomac to Join the Southern Army Adalbert Volck's adopted state of Maryland was a border state lying between the Mason-Dixon Line to the North and the Potomac River to the South, two symbolic demarcations separating the country. While the northern border was more ideological in significance, the Potomac truly presented a physical barrier between the Union and Confederacy, as seen in this lithograph.
26. FDVOLC_120407_154.JPG: Unlike the North, the Confederacy did not have an extensive network of partisan magazines and newspapers to promote its cause. Yet it did have the Baltimore dentist Adalbert Volck (1828-1912). Born in Bavaria, Germany, Volck had moved to Baltimore in 1851. Like many townspeople, he harbored southern sympathies and was offended upon "seeing the illustrated papers of the North filled with one-sided pictures of the war, and with villainous caricatures," especially those of the prolific Thomas Nast. Compelled to tell the South's story, he surreptitiously published, under the pseudonym V. Blada, "Sketches from the Civil War in North America," a limited set of thirty drawings for two hundred subscribers. The selections presented here represent the core of Volck's work and touch upon such aspects of life in the Confederacy as home industry, Union occupation, destruction, and ruin. Today, as the nation observes the Civil War sesquicentennial, Volck's sketches -- rare documentaries of life in the Confederacy -- are insightful commentaries that still retain their satirical bite.
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