A Spirit in My Feet Said Go, and I Went

It was Mathew Brady, a famed photographer of the mid-19^th Century, who first decided to follow the armies to shoot battlefields after a great battle happened within reach of Washington, DC. But it was no easy endeavor to drag your photography equipment and portable darkroom crammed into a rude horse-drawn cart to produce images of iconic battlefield locations the public was craving to learn more about. Brady said after the war, “I felt that I had to go. A spirit in my feet said ‘Go” and I went.”

But above all, Brady and his quite-able legion of photographers truly invented photojournalism—the art of telling a story via a still camera image. Some of photography’s most indelible and searing images are of Antietam battlefield taken just hours after the 23,000 casualties fell on September 17, 1862. Arriving a couple of days after the battle, Alexander Gardner, an associate of Mathew Brady, captured images that still captivate our nation that, 160 years ago, was nearly torn in two.

Ken Burn’s PBS series, which aired first in 1990, stirred the spirit in my feet to go. Living less than an hour from Gettysburg, I started traveling there in the autumn of that year and continued throughout the winter if any chance my work and personal life allowed. I would rouse out of bed at 5 am to catch the warmth of morning glow along the fabled ridges of the country’s most famous battlefield. But then, the spirit in my feet let me to explore the battlefield in snow, too. And it was this experience, having the battlefield totally to myself as snow blanketed the 1400 monuments in white oatmeal that just memorized me.

In those days, while photography was not as cumbersome as Brady’s wet glass plate and toxic chemical cocktails, the process was quite rudimentary compared to the digital world of pixels and Photoshop. It was burning images on to slide film where the exposure had to be rather precise or your results were displeasing.

I loved shooting slide film—the colors popped and the shadows were deep, and if you managed your highlights decently, the 35mm slide is still to this day a visual miracle. There was no cheating or rescuing images: it happened in the field or you failed.

My goal was always to share these horribly wonderful battlefields where peace and beauty live today. With that goal in mind, I began reaching out to every imaginable publisher of Civil War battlefield images. In those meager early years, I was fortunate to find suitors for my work willing to pay enough to feed my camera more and put some gas in 200,000-mile sedan. And I went.

To Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia—and I traveled to places in between. It took a while to build a decent library, and the pennies I made never went too far. I slept in the car and ate protein bars while eating road between battlefields chasing light and weather. Virginia snow in January changes you. Standing on Malvern Hill in a blizzard is exhilarating. Trudging though a foot of snow atop Fisher’s Hill to the witness tree is equally moving.

This “go” mentality ultimately led me to Tide-Mark Press, a small publisher in Hartford, Connecticut owned by Scott Kaeser, publisher of handsome and beautifully rendered calendars. I soon had the privilege to work with him and his staff producing Civil War calendars in the early 2000s. Few projects have been more fun and professionally rewarding than shooting 13 images a year while thinking of historical factual copy blocks worthy to present to the buying public. Mind you, we never sold gazillions of calendars, and the venture was always a financial loss for me. But the gain—oh, the gain—has always been worth it. To be on a battlefield in autumn splendor, spring bliss, summer plenty and winter innocence has been one of my great joys in life.

After 2017, there was a hiatus in producing calendars. But with this 2025 edition, the spirit, the “go,” the “went” returned. As I get older, achieving a calendar-worthy image is more difficult. While my effort remains as great as ever, my figurative horse-drawn cart of a body moves about as fast as Brady’s. But when the heavens turn crimson and violet in November at Gettysburg, the spirit rejoices. Snow at Petersburg’s Crater might just be the perfect photographic experience ever. A winter’s sunrise at Jekyll Island, Georgia, once took my breath away. Early autumn at Little Round Top where the spirit of my Great, Great Grandpa Augustus Henry Heisey was wounded fighting for the 155^th Pennsylvania flits about in the midst and blood red sumac, how can this not connect you to the past?

This 2025 edition is a retro publication in a time when the calendar industry continues to diminish as a viable product. But when a spirit in my feet said, go, I listened. I went.

The calendar ($17.95) is available from Tide-Mark Press, Amazon.com, and where fine calendars are sold in retail stores and online. Those interested in purchase can also email me at cheisey@hbgdiocese.org. All proceeds are donated to the American Battlefield Trust and Emerging Civil War—both organizations work diligently to continue to spread the gospel of the Civil War to generations today and future ones, too.

I believe my courageous Grandpa Gus had to go fight. He was wounded at Round Top, and then at Wilderness’s Saunders Field as he followed the spirit in his feet that said “Go,” and he went as I do now to these great fields where the light now brings peace.