Rare Civil War photos document life between battles - America's Civil War, whose 150th anniversary is marked on Tuesday, is so often described in battles — the Battle of Gettysburg, the Battle of Bull Run, the Battle of Fort Sumter — that it may be easy to forget that the soldiers who fought in the four-year war had a lot of time between fighting. The rare photos seen below document just that — the time soldiers spent waiting, preparing, recovering or just living.
We wanted to show more of the daily life of these people and remind people that they were living their lives in the middle of this horrible war and there was a lot of daily living going on," says Kelly Knauer, editor of "TIME The Civil War: An Illustrated History."
Wives and children followed their husbands - Wives and children sometimes followed their husbands to war, particularly in the early period of the conflict. “(The soldiers) were in the camp, and the women were right there and the kids were right there. They called them camp followers,” Kelly Knauer, editor of 'TIME Civil War: An Illustrated History.' This image, from 1861, may be a family portrait; the soldier was a member of the 31st Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, attached to the Army of the Potomac in Washington. View more photos in the new book TIME The Civil War: An Illustrated History.
Officers of 114th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment - Officers of the 114th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment while away the hours during the lengthy Siege of Petersburg in 1864-65. “There’s a lot of daily life that goes on backstage behind the camps around battlefields,” Knauer says. If these men from the Army of the Potomac joined their unit at its founding, in 1861, they may have served at Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, among other major battles of the war
In, Confederates abandoned their position - In March 1862, the Confederates abandoned their position at Manassas Junction, Va., site of the July 1861 rebel victory, as they prepared for a Union invasion of Virginia, the Peninsula Campaign. In this photo, local children observe Union cavalry soldiers across Manassas Creek. In August 1862 a second great battle would be fought on this site.
But only one Union trooper - Two soldiers are dead, but only one – the Union trooper – has been buried in this photograph taken after the battle by Alexander Gardner. When Mathew Brady, famous for his team's pictures documenting the Civil War, exhibited the images taken at Antietam at an exhibit in New York City, they illustrated the wages of war as never before seen by civilians. Said The New York Times: 'Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards and along streets, he has done something very like it.'
Pioneering aeronaut Thaddeus S.C. Lowe - When the war broke out, pioneering aeronaut Thaddeus S.C. Lowe cut short his experiments with hydrogen-filled balloons, which included meteorological exploration and a proposed transatlantic voyage, and volunteered his services to the Union. Eventually, he commanded a unit consisting of seven balloons inflated by hydrogen gas generators. In this photo, the balloon Intrepid is being inflated in order to make observations at the Battle of Fair Oaks during the Seven Days Battles in 1862. “The Civil War has been called the first modern war because a lot of new technology was being used in war for the first time,' Knauer notes. The balloons did not play a major strategic role in the war but helped usher in the age of aerial warfare
Former slaves were photographed - These former slaves were photographed at Fish Hall, a Hilton Head, S.C., plantation owned by the family of Emma Pope, the wife of Confederate General Thomas Drayton. The plantation was take over by Union forces following the Northern victory over Drayton's forces in the Battle of Port Royal in November 1861. The workers in this photo were still planting, harvesting and ginning cotton but were now keeping the profits
He points out that because of where camera technology was at the time, the in-between was much of what was photographed during the Civil War, since battle scene photos would often come out too blurry. The war marks one of the first times dead bodies were photographed. Another thing that comes out of some of the photos is a time truly left in the past, when family members and nearly entire towns would travel with the men to their battlegrounds.
As Knauer notes: "When they went to war, they took their whole families with them." ( news.yahoo.com )
We wanted to show more of the daily life of these people and remind people that they were living their lives in the middle of this horrible war and there was a lot of daily living going on," says Kelly Knauer, editor of "TIME The Civil War: An Illustrated History."
Wives and children followed their husbands - Wives and children sometimes followed their husbands to war, particularly in the early period of the conflict. “(The soldiers) were in the camp, and the women were right there and the kids were right there. They called them camp followers,” Kelly Knauer, editor of 'TIME Civil War: An Illustrated History.' This image, from 1861, may be a family portrait; the soldier was a member of the 31st Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, attached to the Army of the Potomac in Washington. View more photos in the new book TIME The Civil War: An Illustrated History.
Officers of 114th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment - Officers of the 114th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment while away the hours during the lengthy Siege of Petersburg in 1864-65. “There’s a lot of daily life that goes on backstage behind the camps around battlefields,” Knauer says. If these men from the Army of the Potomac joined their unit at its founding, in 1861, they may have served at Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, among other major battles of the war
In, Confederates abandoned their position - In March 1862, the Confederates abandoned their position at Manassas Junction, Va., site of the July 1861 rebel victory, as they prepared for a Union invasion of Virginia, the Peninsula Campaign. In this photo, local children observe Union cavalry soldiers across Manassas Creek. In August 1862 a second great battle would be fought on this site.
But only one Union trooper - Two soldiers are dead, but only one – the Union trooper – has been buried in this photograph taken after the battle by Alexander Gardner. When Mathew Brady, famous for his team's pictures documenting the Civil War, exhibited the images taken at Antietam at an exhibit in New York City, they illustrated the wages of war as never before seen by civilians. Said The New York Times: 'Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards and along streets, he has done something very like it.'
Pioneering aeronaut Thaddeus S.C. Lowe - When the war broke out, pioneering aeronaut Thaddeus S.C. Lowe cut short his experiments with hydrogen-filled balloons, which included meteorological exploration and a proposed transatlantic voyage, and volunteered his services to the Union. Eventually, he commanded a unit consisting of seven balloons inflated by hydrogen gas generators. In this photo, the balloon Intrepid is being inflated in order to make observations at the Battle of Fair Oaks during the Seven Days Battles in 1862. “The Civil War has been called the first modern war because a lot of new technology was being used in war for the first time,' Knauer notes. The balloons did not play a major strategic role in the war but helped usher in the age of aerial warfare
Former slaves were photographed - These former slaves were photographed at Fish Hall, a Hilton Head, S.C., plantation owned by the family of Emma Pope, the wife of Confederate General Thomas Drayton. The plantation was take over by Union forces following the Northern victory over Drayton's forces in the Battle of Port Royal in November 1861. The workers in this photo were still planting, harvesting and ginning cotton but were now keeping the profits
As Knauer notes: "When they went to war, they took their whole families with them." ( news.yahoo.com )
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