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Images in Conflict: Union Soldier-Artists Picture the Battle of Stones River, 1862–1863
Abstract
The Civil War marked a revolution in the use of visual culture, during which imagery became a soldier's tool. Engagement with imagery presented both an opportunity and a dilemma, forcing some soldier-artists to abandon existing artistic conventions, whilst others fortified them, in search of ways to represent both the war's violence and tedium. The visual idealization of war jarred uncomfortably with the depiction of the conflict's realities. The creation of a diverse grassroots archive ran parallel to the mainstream narrative, examination of which offers new insight into how some soldiers visualized the war in opposition to themes exhibited in popular culture.
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Blackface minstrelsy has a powerful and pervasive presence in popular culture as well as the ideology of racism in America during the Civil War era. To better understand the American political culture of this period, this chapter examines the sociological and ideological content of minstrel shows and its relationship to politics. It also highlights the practice of publishing songbooks for the presidential campaigns from the period of 1848 through 1856.
Three days of savage and bloody fighting between Confederate and Union troops at Stones River in Middle Tennessee ended with nearly 25,000 casualties but no clear victor. The staggering number of killed or wounded equaled the losses suffered in the well-known Battle of Shiloh. Using previously neglected sources, Larry J. Daniel rescues this important campaign from obscurity. The Battle of Stones River, fought between December 31, 1862, and January 2, 1863, was a tactical draw but proved to be a strategic northern victory. According to Daniel, Union defeats in late 1862-both at Chickasaw Bayou in Mississippi and at Fredericksburg, Virginia-transformed the clash in Tennessee into a much-needed morale booster for the North. Daniel's study of the battle's two antagonists, William S. Rosecrans for the Union Army of the Cumberland and Braxton Bragg for the Confederate Army of Tennessee, presents contrasts in leadership and a series of missteps. Union soldiers liked Rosecrans's personable nature, whereas Bragg acquired a reputation as antisocial and suspicious. Rosecrans had won his previous battle at Corinth, and Bragg had failed at the recent Kentucky Campaign. But despite Rosecrans's apparent advantage, both commanders made serious mistakes. With only a few hundred yards separating the lines, Rosecrans allowed Confederates to surprise and route his right ring. Eventually, Union pressure forced Bragg to launch a division-size attack, a disastrous move. Neither side could claim victory on the battlefield. In the aftermath of the bloody conflict, Union commanders and northern newspapers portrayed the stalemate as a victory, bolstering confidence in the Lincoln administration and dimming the prospects for the "peace wing" of the northern Democratic Party. In the South, the deadlock led to continued bickering in the Confederate western high command and scorn for Braxton Bragg.
The Civil War redefined America and forever changed American art. Its grim reality, captured through the new medium of photography, was laid bare. American artists could not approach the conflict with the conventions of European history painting, which glamorized the hero on the battlefield. Instead, many artists found ways to weave the war into works of art that considered the human narrative-the daily experiences of soldiers, slaves, and families left behind. Artists and writers wrestled with the ambiguity and anxiety of the Civil War and used landscape imagery to give voice to their misgivings as well as their hopes for themselves and the nation. This important book looks at the range of artwork created before, during, and following the war, in the years between 1852 and 1877. Author Eleanor Jones Harvey surveys paintings made by some of America's finest artists, including Frederic Church, Sanford Gifford, Winslow Homer, and Eastman Johnson, and photographs taken by George Barnard, Alexander Gardner, and Timothy H. O'Sullivan. Harvey examines American landscape and genre painting and the new medium of photography to understand both how artists made sense of the war and how they portrayed what was a deeply painful, complex period in American history. Enriched by firsthand accounts of the war by soldiers, former slaves, abolitionists, and statesmen, Harvey's research demonstrates how these artists used painting and photography to reshape American culture. Alongside the artworks, period voices (notably those of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman) amplify the anxiety and dilemmas of wartime America.
Close collaboration enables an art historian and paper conservator to attribute a hitherto-unknown Civil War drawing of Berdan Sharpshooters at Yorktown to Winslow Homer. Contrasts between this drawing and other Homer illustrations for Harper’s Weekly during the Yorktown Campaign of 1862 shed new light on the issue of wartime censorship. The drawing’s relationship to other Civil War work by Homer, in particular his first oil, Sharpshooter (1863), and a much later sketch illustrating the artist-correspondent’s perception of sharpshooters at Yorktown as murderers, also shows as never before the profound effect of this wartime experience on his work.
The Civil War generated hundreds of history paintings. Yet, as this essay argues, painters failed to create any iconic, lasting images of the Civil War using the conventions of grand manner history painting, despite the expectations of many that they would and should. This essay first examines the terms by which I am evaluating this failure, then moves on to a consideration of the American history painting tradition. I next examine several history paintings of Civil War scenes in light of this tradition and argue that their “failure” to capture the meaning and essence of the war resulted from a breakdown of the narrative conventions of history painting. Finally, I glance briefly at Winslow Homer’s Civil War scenes, arguably the only ones which have become canonical, and suggest that the success of these images comes from their abandonment of old conventions and the invention of new ones.
1st ed. Glimpses of many things untold -- The tender lines of war -- Army life and the comforts of home -- Combat, bloodshed and the traces of battle -- The union divided? -- The fading gray -- Bonds broken, bonds restored -- Relics of war
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., has been called the greatest jurist and legal scholar in the history of the English-speaking world. In this collection of his speeches, opinions, and letters, Richard Posner reveals the fullness of Holmes' achievements as judge, historian, philosopher, and master of English style. Thematically arranged, the volume covers a rich variety of subjects from aging and death to themes in politics, personalities, and law. Posner's substantial introduction firmly places this wealth of material in its proper biographical and historical context. "A first-rate prose stylist, [Holmes] was perhaps the most quotable of all judges, as this ably edited volume shows."âWashington Post Book World "Brilliantly edited, lucidly organized, and equipped with a compelling introduction by Judge Posner, [this book] is one of the finest single-volume samplers of any author's work I have seen. . . . Posner has fully captured the acrid tang of him in this masterly anthology."âTerry Teachout, National Review "Excellent. . . . A worthwhile contribution to current American political/legal discussions."âLibrary Journal "The best source for the reader who wants a first serious acquaintance with Holmes."âThomas C. Grey, New York Review of Books
s Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War; citation_author=Lee, Anthony W.; citation_author=Young
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Union Soldier, Illustrator of Civil War Battles, Author, Traveler, Map Maker, and Delineator of Western Scenes, Especially Those of the Territories of Colorado and Montana
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The Clark Collection
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The Campaign Diaries of
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The Pictorial Record of the Old West: VII – Alfred E. Mathews
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Pictorial Propaganda and the Civil War
- Thompson
15 Holzer and Neely declared that they were “at war with the very idea of ‘illustration’ in Civil War history.” Though in reference to the iconic, mainstream visualizations of the conflict (which have since received the attention of scholars), soldier-artists and their images lag behind
- Harold Holzer
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Unidentified newspaper clipping in the Western History Department
- Ulysses S Grant
The Union Image: Popular Prints of the Civil War North
- Neely
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‘Harvesting’ the Civil War: Art in Wartime New York
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Interesting Narrative: Being a
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Letter to the Tuscarawas Advocate Newspaper
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The Union Soldier in Battle
- Hess
On Alexander Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War
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The Pictorial Record of the Old West
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Blood Shed in This War: Civil War Illustrations by Captain Adolph Metzner
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letter in the Western History Department of the Denver Public Library, quoted in Nolie Mumey
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Charge of the First Brigade
- Alfred Edward Mathews
- Middleton
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- Co
Battle of Monterey - The Americans Forcing Their Way to the Main Plaza Sept. 23th 1846, PGA - Currier & Ives - Battle of Monterey (A size), Prints and Photographs Division, LoC, or N. Currier, lithograph, 1847, Battle of Cerro Cordo
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Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam
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Two Soldiers: The Campaign Diaries of
- Robet J Campbell
Thompson observes that the work of Civil War printmakers established the main themes of pictorial propaganda for every American war to follow. Thompson, William F., “Pictorial Propaganda and the Civil War
- Thompson
Thirty Years After: An Artist's Memoir of the Civil War
- Edwin Forbes
The Vacant Chair: The Northern Soldier Leaves Home
- Saum
- O Lewis
The Union Soldier, 55; Faust, 41. For more on the destructive power of rifled weaponry, which caused 94% of Union casualties in the war, see Hess
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Battlefield Near Pittsburg Landing
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Shiloh as Seen by a Private Soldier,” A Paper Read before California Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States
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Letter to Dear Friends
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