The Source By Michael K. Shaffer
Battles and Leaders of the Civil War
Researching the American Civil War provides limitless opportunities to explore the battles, soldiers, commanding officers, and the various social, political, and economic factors during the middle portion of the nineteenth century. This column will focus on primary source materials, and the current installment proves no different. Often, one may not consider Civil War photographs as source material. The thousands of images captured through the lenses of photographers, North and South, have left researchers with a visual history of the conflict. This month, we will explore some of the most valuable collections of images available.
Cover of volume one.
November 2016
Civil War News
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Marking the fiftieth anniversary of the war, editor Francis Trevelyan Miller established the benchmark of books containing wartime images, when he edited a 10-volume series: The Photographic History of the Civil War. Working in the early part of the twentieth century, Miller took advantage of the knowledge of many veterans from the war, soliciting them to submit various accounts to accompany the photographs. The resultant work contained 3,389 images, many appearing for the first time in print. Absent the assistance of professional historians in the editing process, the volumes, while outstanding for the excellent photos, contains many errors, especially in the various captions. Officers appear with incorrect ranks, and the occasional wrong date and place name will surface. Despite these flaws, do not shy away from referencing the collection. Perusing the images will shed additional insight on the subject under study. The ability to visually examine the terrain of a battlefield, usually captured in a stereograph type image, helps one gain a better understanding of why troops encountered difficulties in maneuvering under certain conditions. Gaze into the eyes of the young men preparing for war, and one can almost feel the sadness over a nation torn asunder. In 1987, The Blue and Grey Press offered a reprint of Miller’s 1911 edition.
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Condensed into five volumes – each of the Blue and Grey books contains two volumes from the original – this reissue provides researchers with ample opportunities to gain access. Seeking to cover the war from Fort Sumter to Appomattox in chronological order, Miller laid out his books to mirror the war’s timeline. Several of the volumes contain listings of the various engagements. Volume one, ‘The Opening Battles,’ leads to ‘Two Years of Grim War,’ the second installment. A focus on ‘The Decisive Battles’ and ‘The Cavalry’ exists in the next two volumes. Volume five, ‘Forts and Artillery,’ along with ‘The Navies,’ deviate somewhat from the timeline to explore specific elements of the war, as do the subsequent volumes. Rounding out the collection, in books seven through 10, one finds ‘Soldier Life and Secret Service,’ Prisons and Hospitals,’ ‘The Armies and Leaders,’ and finally, ‘Poetry
Photograph from Miller’s work. Cover of Images of War, Vol. 4. and Eloquence.’ Jumping to 1981, 70 years after Miller’s work appeared, William C. Davis, along with Bell Wiley, began editing what resulted in a six-volume collection. The Image of War: 18611865. Subsequent volumes would arrive over the next three years, with the final edition hitting bookstores in 1984. As time passed away from the fiftieth anniversary of the war, many additional photographs surfaced around the world. Davis, Wiley, and the team at Doubleday and Company (the publisher) scoured the globe in search of never before seen photographs. Yes, they found
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many of the same pictures Miller’s team had discovered earlier, but the advancements in printing since 1911 afforded Doubleday the opportunity to reproduce the images with much greater clarity than those found in Miller’s volumes. Containing over 4,000 photos, the Davis and Wiley collection, much like Miller’s, covers the conflict in chronological order. ‘Shadows of the Storm’ and ‘The Guns of ‘62’ open the series. Volume three, ‘The Embattled Confederacy,’ and ‘Fighting for Time,’ number four, capture the war’s middle years. The ‘The South Besieged’ and ‘The End of an Era’ comprise the final two volumes. The writers contributing
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to this series reads like an all-star lineup of Civil War historians. In addition to Davis and Wiley, T. Harry Williams; Virgil Carrington Jones; Albert Castel; Warren Hassler, Jr.; Emory Thomas; James I. Robertson, Jr.; Frank Vandiver; Charles Roland; William Frassanito; Herman Hattaway; Edwin C. Bearss; Robert K. Krick; and Russell F. Weigley penned articles. Their work, along with contributions from many others, resulted in a collection, which historian David J. Eicher considers “…an outstanding model for Civil War photographic history.” Check WorldCat http://www. worldcat.org/ for help in finding these titles in your local library. One can also purchase copies, inexpensively, from any of the various online booksellers. Next month, we will continue to explore other Civil War photography sources. Please keep suggestions for future ‘The Source’ columns coming! Send them to the email address shown below. Good luck in your research! 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.