Question of the Week: 1/25-1/31/21
Imagine you’re moving into a new office that will be seen and photographed many times. You get to pick four portraits or photographs from the Civil War era.
What goes on your office wall?
Imagine you’re moving into a new office that will be seen and photographed many times. You get to pick four portraits or photographs from the Civil War era.
What goes on your office wall?
I live in England and have had a keen interest in all things Lincoln for many years. So I would pick four Lincoln photographs. The first is one taken by Brady before Lincoln’s speech at Cooper Union. The next would be one taken by Hesler when Lincoln messed up his hair. The third would be full-face picture by Gardner taken a few days before Lincoln went to Gettysburg. My final choice is my all time favourite , taken in February 1864 showing Lincoln and Tad looking at an album of photographs. It took time to pick my favourites, so many brilliant ones to look at but these , for me at least, are the best.
Have you real Carl Sandberg’s volumes on Lincoln?
Abraham Lincoln, Winfield Scott Hancock, Robert E. Lee, and finally, Joseph Wheeler – though a Lieutenant General in the Confederacy, later served as a U.S
General in the Spanish American War and Philippine – American War.
Lincoln, Grant and Lee. The fourth was not so easy. How about the Rebs and the Yanks shaking hands at the 50th anniversary of Gettysburg?
Lincoln, Grant, Farragut, and the famous picture of Fredericksburg from Marye’s Heights
The 4 photographs should tell a story: Lincoln, Charles Parsons, Richard Kirkland & the Charleston S.C. Slave Market. Knowing something about each would describe the true significance of the Civil War and not the revisionist slop being politically promoted by those that don’t have a clue.
Surviving photos of my ancestors that fought in the war from both sides. I like Pilla’s idea of the old Rebs and Yanks shaking hands at Gettysburg in 1913 too.
General Thomas Jackson CSA , General John Reynolds USA, General Thomas Stevenson USA, General Pat Cleburne CSA. Brave Men who died because we were too stupid and arrogant to listen and talk.
Colonel Elmer Ellsworth–many to choose from, Private Frank Brownell standing on the Marshall House Flag, the guns of First Bull Run on Henry House Hill, and finally an image I bought from a fellow baseball fan of a group of red-shirted ballplayers in action in front of an old house. Just like I have in my current office!
The tintype of my direct ancestor in the US Engineers Battalion and photos of Edmund Kirby, Alonzo Cushing, and Justin Dimick – three new grads from West Point who made the ultimate sacrifice commanding their guns and fighting for the country they took an oath to defend.
Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Robert Smalls, and Susie King Taylor. All the before mentioned are fine choices, but I wouldn’t want to needlessly invite the social justice warriors, Antifa, and BLM folks into my life.
The famous photograph of young southern men from a militia organized after the John
Brown raid, and a less familiar photograph of two southern women in deep mourning walking through the ruins of either Columbia or Richmond. They’re evocative; they tell a story.
I’ll post here what I posted on the ECW Facebook page..
I’d have a picture of the “Monitor” and the “Merrimack” doing battle, I’d have one of an observation balloon like that used at the Siege of Yorktown, I would have one of the Confederate submarine the “Hunley”, and lastly I’d display a picture of Pickett’s Charge. Those four pictures would represent the dimensions of combat the Civil War took place in. They foreshadowed what would come to be as far as warfare environments. In the air, on the ground, on the surfaces of the rivers and lakes and oceans, and under the sea. That all happened in the Civil War.