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

DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: Powerful Partnerships: Civil War-Era Couples:

Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.

Description of Pictures: Powerful Partnerships: Civil War-Era Couples
July 1, 2022 – May 18, 2025
Long before the term “power couple” found its way into English lexicon, dynamic duos had been making their mark on U.S. history. Powerful Partnerships: Civil War-Era Couples sheds light on the stories and faces of five couples whose work and lives shaped the nation around them during tumultuous times. Featuring photography by the iconic Mathew Brady Studio, the exhibition introduces visitors to the exploits of Nathaniel and Mary Banks, John and Jessie Frémont, Ulysses and Julia Grant, George and Ellen McClellan, and Charles and Lavinia Stratton (better known to the public as Mr. and Mrs. Tom Thumb).

Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon

underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.

Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider.
IP Address: 3.133.142.231 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.

Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]

Share: Facebook Twitter Digg
[1] COUPLE_220703_05.JPG	[2] COUPLE_220703_08.JPG	[3] COUPLE_220703_14.JPG
[4] COUPLE_220703_21.JPG	[5] COUPLE_220703_32.JPG	[6] COUPLE_220703_38.JPG
[7] COUPLE_220703_41.JPG	[8] COUPLE_220703_46.JPG	[9] COUPLE_220703_56.JPG
[10] COUPLE_220703_60.JPG	[11] COUPLE_220703_68.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. COUPLE_220703_08.JPG: Powerful Partnerships: Civil War-Era Couples
2. COUPLE_220703_14.JPG: Nathaniel P. Banks, 1816-1894 Born Waltham, Massachusetts Former state legislator, congressman, and governor Nathaniel P. Banks lacked military experience, but this did not prevent his appointment as major general of volunteers following the fall of Fort Sumter in 1861. Though Banks performed courageously in battle, he fell short as an effective field commander, and his troops sustained heavy losses at Winchester and Cedar Mountain, Virginia, in the summer of 1862. He was relieved of his command and reassigned in November as commander of the Army of the Gulf, headquartered in New Orleans. Mary Banks joined her husband there, where she supported him by staging glittering parties to benefit Union troops and their families and by organizing grand celebrations to mark Union victories. In 1863, Banks’s forces captured the Confederate stronghold at Port Hudson but suffered massive casualties. A disastrous defeat in the ill-conceived Red River Expedition, which was meant to establish a Union foothold in Texas, cost Banks his final command. Mathew Brady Studio, c 1860
3. COUPLE_220703_21.JPG: Mary Theodosia Palmer Banks, 1819-1901 Born Charlestown, Massachusetts Mary Palmer was a spinning frame worker and Nathaniel Banks was a “bobbin boy” when they met as child laborers in a textile mill in Waltham, Massachusetts. Eager to obtain an education and improve their prospects, they studied together in night schools at the end of their long hours at the mill. Following a lengthy courtship, the couple married in 1847. In the months leading up to their wedding, Nathaniel Banks wrote admiringly to his fiancée: “Perhaps you have heard how well satisfied I am with my girl? Such a sweet disposition! So much energy for improving herself and gratifying the family! Such ambition!” When Nathaniel Banks’s pursuit of elected office ultimately led to the governorship of Massachusetts (1858–61), Mary Banks was praised for attaining “the highest position among the ladies of the state” after “starting in the lowest position that a cotton mill could offer her.” Mathew Brady Studio, c 1860
4. COUPLE_220703_32.JPG: Ulysses S. Grant, 1822-1885 Born Point Pleasant, Ohio A West Point graduate and Mexican-American War veteran, Ulysses S. Grant resigned from the army in 1854. Prolonged separation from his beloved wife, Julia Dent Grant, had taken its toll, and he was eager to return to her and civilian life. Yet when the Civil War erupted in 1861, he felt duty-bound to volunteer. Grant emerged as the Union army’s most effective general. Although heavy casualties often accompanied his victories, President Lincoln refused to relieve Grant of his command, declaring, “I can’t spare this man—he fights.” Lincoln’s faith was justified when Grant’s victorious Siege of Vicksburg (1863) marked a turning point in the war. Equally successful campaigns in Tennessee further strengthened Grant’s position. Appointed general-in-chief of the Union army (1864), he developed a multi-theater war strategy of coordinated attacks to batter the Confederates on every front. The soundness of Grant’s approach was confirmed when Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox (1865). Mathew Brady Studio, 1864
5. COUPLE_220703_38.JPG: Julia Dent Grant, 1826-1902 Born White Haven, near St. Louis, Missouri Julia Dent Grant served as a stabilizing influence in the life of her husband, Ulysses S. Grant. She remained steadfast in her devotion and her belief in his potential, despite a series of setbacks in the early years of their marriage. When Ulysses Grant reentered military service during the Civil War, his need for his wife’s companionship and counsel was such that she hastened to join him in the field whenever possible. Throughout the war, no other general’s wife spent as much time in army encampments as she did. While traveling to meet her husband in Oxford, Mississippi, in December 1862, Julia Grant narrowly avoided capture by Confederate raiders when they swept into the town of Holly Springs. She later joined the general at his encampments at Jackson, Memphis, Nashville, Vicksburg, and City Point. At the end of the war, she accompanied her husband to Washington, D.C., along with his victorious troops. Mathew Brady Studio, c 1864
6. COUPLE_220703_41.JPG: Charles Sherwood Stratton, 1838-1883 Born Bridgeport, Connecticut Charles Stratton was four years old when he was plucked from obscurity by impresario P. T. Barnum and introduced to the public as “Gen. Tom Thumb” in 1842. Stratton had ceased growing before his first birthday and stood just twenty-five inches tall when Barnum discovered him. The wily showman proceeded to add seven years to the boy’s age and marketed him as a recent arrival from Europe. Transformed under Barnum’s tutelage, Stratton emerged as a phenomenally popular entertainer who sang, danced, and performed a variety of costumed roles. The long-lived and amiable partnership that followed generated substantial fortunes for both Stratton and the “Prince of Humbug.” Charles Stratton’s popularity continued throughout the 1840s and 50s, but his star had dimmed somewhat by the time he met Lavinia Warren in 1862. Their subsequent courtship and marriage returned Stratton to the spotlight as half of one of the world’s most famous couples. Mathew Brady Studio, 1863
7. COUPLE_220703_46.JPG: Lavinia Warren Stratton, 1841-1919 Born Middleborough, Plymouth, Massachusetts Lavinia Warren was already a bankable talent before her marriage catapulted her to international fame. She launched her career as an entertainer in 1858, performing on a Mississippi showboat, where she was billed as the “Lilliputian Queen.” Signed by P. T. Barnum to an exclusive, four-year contract in December 1862, Warren quickly became a popular draw at the famed impresario’s American Museum in New York City. There, she met Charles Stratton, the celebrated Barnum protégé long known to the world as “Tom Thumb.” When the couple’s engagement was announced after a whirlwind romance, paying crowds thronged Barnum’s museum. Eager to see the “Little Queen of Beauty,” they also purchased countless souvenir photographs of Warren and her fiancé in the weeks leading up to their “Fairy Wedding” on February 10, 1863. By all accounts, their decades-long marriage brought personal happiness as well as professional success to both partners. Mathew Brady Studio, 1863
8. COUPLE_220703_56.JPG: George Britton McClellan, 1826-1885 Mary Ellen Marcy McClellan, 1836-1915 Both born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania George McClellan was twenty-seven when eighteen-year-old Mary Ellen Marcy rejected his first proposal of marriage in 1854. He later renewed his efforts to gain her affections after she bowed to her parents’ wishes and ended her engagement to future Confederate General A. P. Hill. In October 1859, she accepted McClellan’s proposal, and they were married on May 22, 1860. Mary Ellen McClellan was pregnant with the couple’s first child in April 1861 when her husband accepted the first of his Civil War military commands. She did not join him in camp, but he candidly shared with her his wartime experiences and frustrations in almost daily correspondence from the field. In 1862, General McClellan’s procrastinations and battlefield failures led President Lincoln to relieve him as commander of Army of the Potomac. Mary Ellen McClellan later stood by her embattled husband when he failed to wrest the presidency from Lincoln in the 1864 election. Mathew Brady Studio, c 1864
9. COUPLE_220703_60.JPG: Jessie Benton Fremont, 1824-1902 Born Rockbridge County, Virginia Jessie Benton Frémont spent her life in the public eye—as the daughter of Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton, as the wife of noted explorer John C. Frémont, and later as a popular author. She secured her father’s backing for Frémont to lead a series of government-sponsored expeditions that played a pivotal role in promoting overland migration to the far west. Upon Frémont’s return from the first of these expeditions in 1842, she helped to write the vivid report of his findings that first brought him national recognition. When Frémont ran as the first Republican candidate for president in 1856, Jessie Frémont took an active part in his campaign. In September 1861, after President Lincoln reprimanded General Frémont for his conduct as commander of the Union army’s Western Department, she hurried to Washington, D.C. There, she confronted the president in a futile effort to salvage her husband’s western command. Mathew Brady Studio, c 1863
10. COUPLE_220703_68.JPG: John C. Fremont, 1813-1890 Savannah, Georgia At the outset of the Civil War, President Lincoln appointed former explorer John C. Frémont major general to command the Department of the West, headquartered in St. Louis. Frémont assumed that post in July 1861, but his subsequent refusal to retract a proclamation to confiscate the property of rebel Missourians and free those they had enslaved cost him the president’s confidence and his western command. This episode made Frémont a favorite among radical, antislavery Republicans, who pressured Lincoln to restore him to duty. Assigned to a new command in Virginia in the spring of 1862, he was outmatched by Confederate General “Stonewall” Jackson and later resigned his command rather than serve under General John Pope. Nominated by anti-Lincoln Republicans as their candidate for president in 1864, Frémont withdrew from the contest when a committee of administration loyalists convinced him that his candidacy could open the door to a Democratic victory in November. Mathew Brady Studio, 1861
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.) I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].