BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: Civil War

DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: Civil War:

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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. SIPGCW_220703_002.JPG: The Civil War: Ending Slavery to Preserve the Union Escalating conflicts over states' rights and the institution of slavery reached a crisis point with Abraham Lincoln's election as president in 1860. Convinced that his antislavery views threatened their culture and economy, which depended on forced labor, seven Southern states (later joined by four more) seceded from the Union to form the Confederate States of America. On April 12, 1861, Confederate troops bombarded the Union army outpost of Fort Sumter, South Carolina, launching the Civil War. Determined to preserve the Union, men and women joined the Northern war effort in a variety of military and civilian capacities. Meanwhile, abolitionists pressured the government to include the dismantling of slavery as a war goal. The justification for the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863, which freed those held in bondage in Confederate states, was both moral and practical. It drained the Southern labor force and legalized the conscription of African American soldiers in the Union army. By the war's end in April 1865, roughly two hundred thousand African Americans had contributed to the North's victory. Both sides had lost hundreds of thousands of men in the conflict. Although the Union won the war, the battle for national unity and racial equality was far from over.
2. SIPGCW_220703_006.JPG: Edwin McMasters Stanton, 1814-1869 Born Steubenville, Ohio A brilliant lawyer, Edwin McMasters Stanton became the most important advisor to the Union military while serving as President Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war. Following his appointment in January 1862, Stanton immediately brought about an effective reorganization of the war department, establishing strict procedures for negotiating contracts and vigorously investigating fraudulent ones. Stanton was a crucial antislavery voice in Lincoln’s cabinet, and his efforts to recruit African Americans into the Union army helped turn the tide of the war. Stanton initially remained in his cabinet position under President Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln. However, Stanton’s contention that the former Confederate states should guarantee the civil rights of the formerly enslaved caused a rift with the president. Although Johnson was impeached for his efforts to remove Stanton, he remained in office. Johnson’s successor, President Ulysses S. Grant, later appointed Stanton to the Supreme Court, but he died before assuming the role. Henry Uike, 1872
3. SIPGCW_220703_016.JPG: Joseph Henry, 1797-1878 Born Albany, New York In December 1861, the Smithsonian became embroiled in the escalating wartime battle over abolition. The eminent physicist Joseph Henry, first secretary of the Smithsonian, carefully guarded the institution’s nonpartisan reputation for scientific research and publication. Unaware that he was dealing with an antislavery pressure group, Henry allowed the recently formed Washington Lecture Association to present a series of talks in the Smithsonian’s public lecture hall. Henry was horrified by the openly political speeches, which attacked the Lincoln administration for its inaction on emancipation. But it was not only the politicization of the Smithsonian that troubled him. Although his scientific research had benefited years earlier from the “indispensable” assistance of Sam Parker, a free man of mixed race, Henry barred Frederick Douglass from taking the stage with the other abolitionist speakers. He later explained, “I would not let the lecture of the coloured man be given in the rooms of the Smithsonian.” Thomas Le Clear, 1877
4. SIPGCW_220703_021.JPG: George Brinton McClellan, 1826-1885 Born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania After the Union army’s defeat at the First Battle of Manassas on July 21, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln appointed General George McClellan to command federal operations in Virginia. Within weeks, McClellan transformed a demoralized volunteer army into a disciplined fighting machine: the Army of the Potomac. But achieving victory required engaging the enemy in battle, and in this McClellan procrastinated, much to Lincoln’s exasperation. Lincoln wrote McClellan in April 1862, “it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow. I am powerless to help this […] you must act.” Tension between Lincoln and McClellan grew further when the general, who joined the fight solely to preserve the Union, urged the President not to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. After he failed to pursue Robert E. Lee’s army following the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam in September 1862, Lincoln relieved McClellan of his command. Julian Scott, 1888
5. SIPGCW_220703_032.JPG: Wendell Phillips, 1811-1884 Born Boston, Massachusetts An eloquent and persuasive speaker, Wendell Phillips toured the country delivering powerful lectures against slavery. Phillips credited his wife, the fervent abolitionist and reformer Anne Terry Greene, with opening his eyes to injustice and inspiring his activism. Unlike President Abraham Lincoln and many others, Phillips considered emancipation a more urgent goal than preserving the Union. In March 1862, he traveled to Washington, D.C., to pressure Congress and the president to act more aggressively against slavery. He perturbed Smithsonian Secretary Joseph Henry (shown at right), by using the institution’s lecture hall as his forum. The pathbreaking sculptor Edmonia Lewis, who descended from a part-Ojibwe (Chippewa) mother and a Haitian father, made this medallion bust early in her career as part of a series of portraits of abolitionists. While living in Rome, she made the sculpture Forever Free (1867), depicting an African American couple rejoicing at the news of the Emancipation Proclamation. Edmonia Lewis, 1871
6. SIPGCW_220703_041.JPG: The First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation before the Cabinet Sitter Abraham Lincoln, 12 Feb 1809 - 15 Apr 1865 Edwin McMasters Stanton, 19 Dec 1814 - 24 Dec 1869 Salmon Portland Chase, 13 Jan 1808 - 7 May 1873 Gideon Welles, 1 Jul 1802 - 11 Feb 1878 Caleb Blood Smith, 16 Apr 1808 - 7 Jan 1864 Montgomery Blair, 10 May 1813 - 27 Jul 1883 Edward Bates, 4 Sep 1793 - 25 Mar 1869 William Henry Seward, 16 May 1801 - 15 Oct 1872 Despite his abolitionist leanings, Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) entered the presidency pledging not to interfere with slavery in those states where it existed. To avoid alienating slaveholding border states that remained loyal to the Union, he steadfastly resisted vocal prodding from abolitionists who urged him to make the dismantling of slavery a goal of the Civil War. But by the summer of 1862, Lincoln recognized the emancipation of those enslaved within Confederate-held territory as both a military and a moral necessity. In September 1862, Lincoln announced that the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all enslaved persons free in regions of the South still in rebellion, would take effect on January 1, 1863. Printmakers capitalized on the positive public response to Lincoln’s order by issuing scores of commemorative prints. This lithograph, based on a painting in the U.S. Capitol, recreates the cabinet meeting at which Lincoln read the first draft of his proclamation. Alexander Hay Ritchie, 1866
7. SIPGCW_220703_051.JPG: Martin Robison Delany, 1812-1885 Born Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia) Convinced that African Americans would never be accepted on equal terms in the United States, the physician, newspaper editor, and antislavery activist Martin Delany moved to Canada in 1856 while pursuing plans to emigrate to West Africa. With the outbreak of the Civil War, however, Delany saw an opportunity to fight for equality and respect in the country of his birth. Delany’s commission as a major in the Union army came too late for him to command troops on the battlefield, but this lithograph, based on the photograph displayed at left, advanced his goal of demonstrating the patriotism and competence of Black men. Here, his commanding figure dominates the foreground, framed by an American flag and an oak tree, symbol of strength and endurance. Behind him, a sentry stands at attention in a field of military tents. Popular prints such as this satisfied a growing demand for dignified images of Black leaders. Unidentified artist, after Abraham Bogardus, c 1865
8. SIPGCW_220703_059.JPG: Martin Robison Delany 1812-1885 Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia) When the Emancipation Proclamation formally opened the door to African American service in the Union army in 1863, Martin Robison Delany -- a longtime activist in the struggle for equality -- energetically recruited soldiers for Black Union regiments. Troubled that these units were led by white officers, Delany approached President Abraham Lincoln in February 1865 with a proposal to create a fighting force under the command of African American officers, whose ranks would be filled largely by the formerly enslaved. After Lincoln approved the plan, and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton endorsed it, Delany became the first Black officer to receive a field command when he was commissioned to lead the 104th Regiment of U.S. Colored Troops. He was ordered to Charleston, South Carolina, to establish a training camp and recruit Black officers and foot soldiers, but the war ended before Delany or his troops saw action on the battlefield. Abraham Bogardus (1822-1908) Albumen silver print, c. 1865 Lent by Joey McFarland
9. SIPGCW_220703_064.JPG: William T. Sherman, 1820-1891 Born Lancaster, Ohio “War is war and not popularity-seeking.” With these words to his Confederate opponent at Atlanta, General William T. Sherman displayed the attitude that made him both a successful commander and a bitterly hated figure in the South. Sherman first distinguished himself at the Battle of Shiloh, Tennessee, in April 1862, before promotion to command the Army of the Tennessee, and then the entire western theater. In 1864, Sherman set out to demolish the Confederates’ will and capacity to fight. In Atlanta, he destroyed everything of potential military value: railroads, factories, and supply depots. His army then cut a 285-mile path of destruction to the coastal town of Savannah. Thousands of formerly enslaved African Americans followed Sherman’s army through Georgia. Hoping to provide for some of these people, on January 16, 1865, Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15, which re-allocated four hundred thousand acres of land in forty-acre segments to Black families. George Peter Alexander Healy, 1866
10. SIPGCW_220703_075.JPG: The Council of War John Rogers became the most popular US sculptor of his day by mass-producing affordable, small-scale sculptural groups like this one. A fervent abolitionist, Rogers favored subjects that reflected his antislavery, pro-Union views. Here, he represents the moment when General Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885; standing, left) first proposed his plans for an aggressive military campaign against the Confederacy to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (1814-1869) and President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). Rogers designed this work in 1868, three years after Lincoln's assassination. John Rogers, c 1873, after 1868 original Lent by Dr. Stuart F. Mackler
11. SIPGCW_220703_090.JPG: Sojourner Truth, c 1797-1883 Born Hurley, New York 3In 1843, sixteen years after gaining her freedom, Isabella Baumfree changed her name to Sojourner Truth and emerged as one of the nation’s foremost abolitionists. Speaking throughout the country, she supported her antislavery campaign through sales of her book, the Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1850), and by selling copies of her photograph, which carried the caption, “I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance.” Truth continued to call for slavery’s abolition during the Civil War and rejoiced when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation (1863). Eager to assist the many refugees from enslavement who were flocking to Washington, D.C., she traveled there in 1864. Appointed by the National Freedmen’s Relief Association to serve as “counselor to the freed people” at Freedmen’s Village—the camp established by the federal government at Arlington Heights, Virginia—Truth earned praise for her “great service rendered to the Freedmen and their families.” Unidentified photographer, 1864
12. SIPGCW_220703_099.JPG: Dorothea Dix, 1802-1887 Born Hampden, Maine In 1841, teacher, humanitarian, and reformer Dorothea Dix launched a vigorous campaign to secure humane treatment for those living with mental illness. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Dix was appointed superintendent of women nurses, a job she performed without salary for five years. She set strict standards for her nurses, only accepting women over age thirty and decreeing that all nurses should dress plainly. Her autocratic style brought her into conflict with doctors, nurses, and the army bureaucracy, but she was considered an “angel of mercy” by wounded soldiers. At the end of the war, she returned to mental health advocacy. One of her legacies was St. Elizabeths Hospital, which she helped to found in 1855 as the first federal facility to treat the mentally ill of the army, navy, and the District of Columbia. St. Elizabeths commissioned this portrait of Dix in 1868. Samuel Bell Waugh, 1868
13. SIPGCW_220703_104.JPG: Enemies of Our Union Sitter Jefferson Davis, 3 Jun 1808 - 6 Dec 1889 Alexander Hamilton Stephens, 11 Feb 1812 - 4 Mar 1883 Joseph Eggleston Johnston, 3 Feb 1807 - 21 Mar 1891 Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, 28 May 1818 - 20 Feb 1893 John Bankhead Magruder, 1810 - 1871 Ben McCulloch, 1808 - 1895 George Nichols Hollins, 1799 - 1878 Sterling Price, 20 Sep 1809 - 29 Sep 1867 William Joseph Hardee, 12 Oct 1815 - 6 Nov 1873 Albert Sidney Johnston, 2 Feb 1803 - 6 Apr 1862 Henry Alexander Wise, 3 Dec 1806 - 12 Sep 1876 Robert Edward Lee, 19 Jan 1807 - 12 Oct 1870 John Buchanan Floyd, 01 Jun 1806 - 26 Aug 1863 John Slidell, 1793 - 29 Jul 1871 James Murray Mason, 3 Nov 1798 - 28 Apr 1871 Published in Boston in 1862, this lithograph provided curious Northerners with portraits of fifteen Confederate leaders whose names dominated the newspapers. The print’s title, Enemies of Our Union, makes clear its intention to disparage, rather than celebrate, the individuals represented. The title also exemplifies early framing of the Civil War exclusively in terms of preserving the Union. While prints of Northern military heroes proliferated, inadequate printmaking supplies and presses in the South constrained the production of wartime portraits of Confederate leaders. This lithograph was, therefore, something of a rarity. The printmaker, Louis Prang, was adept at capitalizing on the war’s commercial opportunities. In the immediate aftermath of important military actions, he produced battlefield maps that allowed Northern newspaper readers to follow events in the South. His War Telegram Marking Map came with red and blue pencils for tracking the movements of Union and Confederate troops as reported by telegraphic communications. Louis Prang Lithography Company, 1862
14. SIPGCW_220703_114.JPG: Laura Smith Haviland, 1808-1898 Born Leeds County, Ontario, Canada A Quaker and an abolitionist, Laura Smith Haviland played a critical role in organizing the first antislavery society in the Michigan Territory in 1832. After an epidemic claimed the lives of her husband, parents, sister, and youngest child in 1845, Haviland immersed herself in antislavery initiatives and performed missionary work among African Americans in both slave and free states. As an operative on the Underground Railroad, she made countless trips through Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan to aid fugitives on their perilous journey to freedom in Canada. During the Civil War, Haviland provided nursing care to wounded Union soldiers. She also served as an agent of the Michigan Freedmen’s Association (1864–66) and traveled widely throughout the South, giving much-needed assistance to the region’s newly emancipated populace. In an effort to document slavery’s brutality, Haviland posed for this photograph holding the iron shackles and restraints she found on a Louisiana plantation. Unidentified artist, c 1864
15. SIPGCW_220703_118.JPG: Peter (frequently identified as "Gordon"), life dates unknown Birthplace unknown In late March 1863, an enslaved man identified in contemporary accounts as “Peter” made a bold bid for freedom. Escaping from the cotton plantation of Captain John Lyons on Louisiana’s Atchafalaya River, Peter and several others, including a fugitive named Gordon, traveled through treacherous swamps and bayous. Slave hunters pursued them relentlessly until they reached the Union army encampment at Baton Rouge. Interviewed by camp officials, Peter reported that the horrific scars covering his back were the result of a whipping administered two months before Christmas by Artayou Carrier, the Lyons plantation’s overseer. When photographs documenting Peter’s condition reached the public, they created shockwaves. Widely copied and distributed, pictures such as this example quickly became among the most powerful evidence of slavery’s brutality. Although the first of these photographs to circulate identified their subject as Peter, the name “Gordon” gained currency after a Harper’s Weekly article misidentified him. Matthew Brady Studio, after McPherson & Oliver, 1863
16. SIPGCW_220703_124.JPG: Gordon [sic] Under Medical Inspection (frequently identified as "Gordon"), life dates unknown Birthplace unknown Published on Independence Day, 1863, in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg, this issue of Harper’s Weekly featured several articles concerning recent action in the field by African Americans fighting for the Union cause. One such article, titled “A Typical Negro” told the harrowing story of a man, identified by the author as “Gordon,” who escaped his enslavement on a plantation. Seeking refuge with Union troops at Baton Rouge, he was “mustered into the service” as “a U.S. Soldier.” The article was accompanied by three engravings said to represent “Gordon’s” metamorphosis from ragged fugitive to soldier. Recent research has revealed that Harper’s Weekly conflated the stories of at least two fugitives from bondage—Gordon and Peter—and inaccurately reported or fictionalized aspects of their respective stories. It has also been determined that the engravings illustrating the article are based on photographs of three different men rather than one individual. Attributed to Vincent Colyer, after McPherson & Oliver, published in Harper's Weekly, July 4, 1863
17. SIPGCW_220703_133.JPG: Ulysses S. Grant, 1822-1885 Born Point Pleasant, Ohio At the beginning of the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant served as a brigadier general until his victory at Fort Donelson, Tennessee, in 1862, when his terms were “unconditional surrender.” President Abraham Lincoln promoted him to lieutenant general in 1864, granting him command of all the Union armies. Grant created the Army of the Shenandoah, which protected the capital and routed the Confederates out of the Virginia valley. He also supported the service of approximately two hundred thousand Black men—close to ten percent of the Union army. Black soldiers were, he declared, “the heaviest blow yet given the Confederacy.” Norwegian-born artist Ole Peter Hansen Balling briefly served as a Union soldier at the start of the Civil War but returned to painting after being wounded. This portrait depicts Grant in a trench during the 1863 Siege of Vicksburg; the map on the table beside him shows the area along the Mississippi River. Ole Peter Hansen Balling, 1865
18. SIPGCW_220703_169.JPG: Hercules of the Union, 1861 Sitter Winfield Scott, 13 Jun 1786 - 29 May 1866 Robert Augustus Toombs, 2 Jul 1810 - 15 Dec 1885 Alexander Hamilton Stephens, 11 Feb 1812 - 4 Mar 1883 Jefferson Davis, 3 Jun 1808 - 6 Dec 1889 Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, 28 May 1818 - 20 Feb 1893 David Emanuel Twiggs, 1790 - 1862 Francis Wilkinson Pickens, 1805 - 1869 John Buchanan Floyd, 01 Jun 1806 - 26 Aug 1863 To justify armed conflict with their fellow countrymen, printmakers in the North produced visual propaganda that vilified and dehumanized the South. This print features U.S. Army General Winfield Scott (1786–1866), a Virginia native who remained loyal to the Union, in the guise of the legendary hero Hercules, raising a club labeled “Liberty & Union” against a hydra labeled “Secession.” The seven heads of the mythical beast represent prominent Southern leaders, each labeled with his name and supposed crime. The print was published during the first months of the war and, significantly, does not include slavery among the South’s offenses. There is some irony in pitting Scott against a serpentine creature. He was the architect of a military strategy that critics mocked as the “Anaconda Plan,” which called for surrounding and slowly starving Confederate forces of vital resources. Scott retired in November 1861, but his strategy endured, guiding the Union to victory. Unidentified artist, 1866
19. SIPGCW_220703_183.JPG: Gordon, life dates unknown Birthplace unknown The Union army’s capture of Louisiana’s capital, Baton Rouge, in May 1862, inspired countless fugitives from slavery to risk everything in the hope of finding protection behind Union lines. After Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863, the flow of self-liberated men, women, and children into the army’s encampment at Baton Rouge grew even greater. Regarded by the United States as confiscated rebel “property” or “contraband of war,” these individuals were known collectively as “contrabands.” Barefoot and clothed in rags, Gordon -- the subject of this portrait -- was photographed to document the wretched condition of so many who escaped from bondage and sought refuge with U.S. troops. When the image was reproduced as an engraving in Harper’s Weekly, it carried the caption, “GORDON AS HE ENTERED OUR LINES.” The back of this original carte de visite bears the inscription: “Contraband that marched 40 miles to get to our lines.” McPherson & Oliver, 1863
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Description of Subject Matter: Two of the threads running through the United States before the Civil War were the principle of union and the reality of slavery. In the North, Americans insisted on union above all else; in the South, Americans insisted on slavery above all else; and in the great American West, pioneers and sellers were left to choose between the two.
The Americans represented in this gallery felt strongly about these issues of liberty, union, and slavery. One of them, John Brown, did as much as any single person could do to push the divided nation to the brink of secession and civil war.

Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency in November of 1860 enraged radical southern leaders, who fiercely defended the institution of slavery. As the Republican Party candidate, Lincoln wholly endorsed his party's platform to ban the extension of slavery into the western territories. Although he clearly stated his intention not to interfere with slavery where it already legally existed, southern extremists did not trust the new president-elect. In response, southerners enacted their doctrine of states' rights: "The Union Is Dissolved!" proclaimed the Charleston Mercury on December 20, 1860, when South Carolina became the first of eleven states to secede. A call to arms on both sides followed on the heels of secession. "Both parties deprecated war," President Lincoln reflected four years later in his second inaugural address, "but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came."

Lincoln and His Cabinet:
Upon entering the office of the presidency, Abraham Lincoln had every reason to feel skeptical about the ultimate success of his administration. Faced with a civil war, responsibility rested on his angular shoulders as it had done with no other American president before or since. Moreover, Lincoln had to win control over his cabinet, which at the start was at odds with him and with itself: three of the seen members had been Lincoln's rivals for the party's nomination, and four of the seven had at one time belonged t the Democratic Party. In selecting men who were his political equals, Lincoln was putting his leadership ability to an early and critical test. His successful management of this "team of rivals" for the good of the nation was a supreme test of his self-confidence and mastery of men.

Winslow Homer's Civil War Engravings:
In 1861 and 1862, Winslow Homer made sketches of camp life and skirmishes between Union and Confederate soldiers. His sketches captured the homesickness, numbing routine, and sudden violence of the conflict. The engravings made from his sketches and published in newspapers and magazines often romanticized the realities of the war, but eager readers welcomed these glimpses of the conflict. Homer also made wood engravings of events at home during the war, often focusing on absent soldiers and the war effort in New York.
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