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January 2021 Michael K. Shaffer is a Civil War historian, author, lecturer, and instructor, who remains a member of the Society of Civil War Historians, Historians of the Civil War Western Theater, and the Georgia Association of Historians.
Readers may contact him at mkscdr11@gmail.com or request speaking engagements via his website www.civilwarhistorian.net. Follow Michael on Facebook www.facebook.com/michael.k.shaffer and Twitter @michaelkshaffer.
Harper’s Weekly Index [This first paragraph, edited from the February 2017 edition of this column, will set the stage for the index under study.] Visualizing the American Civil War’s key players and viewing battlefield maps allowed folks on the home front to maintain a closer connection with transpiring events. Illustrated newspapers, like Harper’s Weekly, offered images of many occurrences. Although the technology needed to reproduce photographs in newspapers did not yet exist, woodcuts, copied from pictures or sketches made by the various artists in the employ of many newspapers, brought the war to life. Thanks to the University of Pennsylvania, http://onlinebooks. library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=harpersweekly, researchers can access the wartime issues of Harper’s Weekly. One can search for terms or browse through pages of each edition, and users can download search results in various forms, including e-book formats. Thanks to the compilation of Richard A. Owens, An Index to the Illustrations of Harper’s Weekly During the Civil War Years 1861–1865, one can quickly locate images based on several criteria.
three theaters of war; these categories follow. 1. Front Cover Illustrations 2. Confederate Officers and Statesmen 3. Union Officers and Statesmen 4. President Lincoln 5. Maps 6. Naval Scenes 7. Local Scenes from Virginia & Maryland 8. Scenes from Washington, D.C. 9. War Scenes 10. Engravings & Scenes of Unique Interest 11. Local Scenes from States North & South 12. Sketches of Winslow Homer 13. Pictures by Mathew Brady 14. Sketches by Thomas Nast For a quick test-drive, examine the following scenario. If one sought an early-war image of, for example, the coast of Georgia, the search might begin in consulting Owens’s index of ‘Maps,’ and
1862. As the highlighted row indicates, the January 4, 1862 edition contained a “Bird’s Eye View of the Coast of Savannah, Georgia, to Beaufort, S.C., Showing the Position of the U.S. Fleet.” The image at the beginning of this article, “General Sherman’s Army Entering Savannah, Georgia, Sherman enters Savannah, courtesy Harper’s Weekly, January December 21, 1864, appeared on 14, 1865. the cover of the January 14, 1865, Harper’s edition, thus indicating the need for researchers to deploy creative thought when exploring the Owens index. Remember the time required to get information from the battlefront to the press and adjust accordingly. This particular illustration appears below. Visit WorldCat http://www. worldcat.org/ for help in finding this index in a local library. Used copies exist in the inventory of several online booksellers. Next month, we will explore other primary source materials. Continued good luck in researching the Civil War!
An Index to the Illustrations of Harper’s Weekly During the Civil War Years 1861-1865. In chronological order, Owens provides images segmented into 14 categories and covering the
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Map of Georgia coast, courtesy Harper’s Weekly, January 4, 1862.
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Owens’s index of Maps.
Civil War News
January 2021