Uncovering Fake News at the Battle of Gettysburg, July and November, 1863

William “Bill” Frassanito’s book Gettysburg: A Journey in Time is one of my favorite Civil War reads. I read it first when I was around 10 years old. He was a pioneer in analyzing historic photographs. I highly recommend his book and all his works; however, this isn’t a book review. I wanted to zoom in on a few incidences that Frassanito uncovered showing the 1863 fake news that came out of the battle of Gettysburg.

Just a few days after the battle, July 1-3, 1863, photographers descended upon the scene to document the tragedy. But did they really “document” the events? Sometimes they did and other times not. Turns out, some photographs were dramatized: bodies and accoutrements staged, and images outright faked.[1]

This deception, no doubt, sold more images and books, but it told a false story. Who was behind such trickery? There were several well-known photographers: Alexander Gardner and Timothy O’Sullivan, Mathew Brady, and the Weavers.

Gardner and his assistant O’Sullivan took the most famous series of photographs. The two began their work on July 6, 1863, only three days after the battle had ended. The photographers found a dead Confederate soldier lying near Devils Den and went to work. They first took a series of four negatives at different angles.

The dead Confederate soldier lay on the ground with a rifled musket placed above his head. A kepi and knapsack lay nearby. The caption read: “A Sharpshooter’s Last Sleep.” You should be asking yourself…how’d Garner and O’Sullivan know the young Southern soldier was a sharpshooter? Good question. They didn’t. The photographers had no idea who he was. They made up the caption and posed the musket and kepi.[2]

Garner and O’Sullivan got more creative for their next couple of photographs. About 40 yards north of where this body lay, was a man-made rock wall in between two boulders. It was a great battle scene with one catch. You can almost hear the photographers’ having their discussion:

Garner: “This is a great setting for a tintype!”

O’Sullivan: “Yeah, it’d be even better with a…(light bulb)…”

Garner and O’Sullivan: “Let’s put the body up here. Carefully of course, don’t want the corpse falling apart on us in the hot humid weather.”

That’s exactly what they did. They carried or probably dragged the body 40 yards up the slope and posed him. The photographers propped the same musket up against the rock wall and lay the accoutrements nearby. Garner and O’Sullivan took two images of the dead Confederate at this site and titled them: “The home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg.” The photographers surmised in their caption:

. . . the sharpshooter had evidently been wounded in the head by a fragment of shell which had exploded over him, and had laid down upon his blanket to await death . . . Was he delirious with agony, or did death come slowly to his relief, while memories of home grew dearer . . .? . . .What familiar voices may he not have heard, like whispers beneath the roar of battle, as his eyes grew heavy in their long, last sleep!

Garner went on in his caption. When he attended the Soldiers National Cemetery dedication in November 1863, he claimed he saw the remains of this soldier at Devils Den, along with the now rusted musket. It was all a masterpiece of complete bull.

But wait, Garner and O’Sullivan had competition. Like Garner, Peter Weaver of Hanover, Pennsylvania attended the Soldiers National Cemetery dedication in the fall of 1863. Either Weaver or someone in his entourage thought it’d be a great idea to get nine live Union soldiers and pose them as dead Union soldiers at Devils Den. Was this series of images a docudrama, so to speak, and a way to make a quick buck? Historians don’t know the intent of Weaver’s not-so-dead soldiers’ series. I can’t find any captions. Frassanito isn’t sure if the faked scenes were intended to fool anyone. Though we don’t know the purpose, the memoirs record there was heavy fighting above and below Devils Den, not in the rocks. It’s too slippery to fight on the rocks, and there was no way to perform shoulder-to-shoulder tactics on the rocks.

Alexander Garner, Timothy O’Sullivan, and Peter Weaver attempted to create history, at least in these cases.[3] Amazingly, it took decades before anyone with an excellent eye respectfully called them on their faked images. Frassanito taught me the importance of critical observation. Photographs tell us a lot, but they don’t necessarily tell us the real story – contemporary media images need to be held to such scrutiny as well. Don’t take for granted that the caption is correct or what you are seeing is what is really happening. You have to objectively approach the image, assess, and see what it is telling you. It’s difficult! We approach photos, social media, news with preconceived ideas, and we are trusting. Not saying everything you see is inaccurate but some is, especially on social media.

[1] Back in high school, I told some friends about how these Gettysburg photographs were faked. My friends kept teasing me and saying well, then, the Civil War never happened since these photos were faked…for some reason I kept arguing with them. The conversation devolved, but it was memorable.

[2] There are some great blogs about the identity of the Confederate soldier.  https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2013/06/20/the-true-story-behind-the-gettysburg-sharpshooter/

https://npsgnmp.wordpress.com/2018/02/01/another-look-at-the-home-of-a-rebel-sharpshooter/ and https://www.historynet.com/behind-barricade-identity-devils-den-sharpshooter/

[3] These photographers were good at their job, and they left us with some excellent images of the battlefield topography.