Don Nardo - Civil War Witness: Mathew Bradys Photos Reveal the Horrors of War

Chapter One

Mathew Brady struggled to guide his horses away from patches of mud in a field near McPhersons Woods. The field was vacant and quiet. But he knew that fewer than two weeks earlier, in the first days of July 1863, it and other places near the village of Gettysburg had been scenes of utter horror. They had been alive with the shudders and shouts of masses of men moving back and forth in a kind of dance of death.

After what some were saying might be a major turning point in the Civil War, many Americans wanted more than written descriptions of the epic battle in eastern Pennsylvania. They craved visual recordsphotographs of the fields where so many brave men, northerners and southerners alike, had fallen. Brady, as he usually did, aimed to give the public what it wanted as quickly as he could.

Mathew Brady posed for his camera operator in a field near Gettysburgs McPhersons Woods.

It was vital, therefore, to keep his what-is-it wagon from getting bogged down in the mud. He may have recalled, perhaps with a smile, how that quaint name for the mobile darkrooms had come about. At the wars start, there was no particular term for them. Soldiers had quizzed Brady and other photographers about them. They had asked What is it? so many times that they soon came to be known as what-is-it wagons.

Such specially equipped vehicles were a necessity for photographers in the field. In those days, capturing subjects outdoors in full daylight required much more than just a camera and a tripod to rest it on. Practical, reliable cameras had existed for only a few years. Large and bulky by todays standards, they used rectangular glass plates that were coated with a wet, sticky mixture of chemicals and cotton.

To take a photo, a photographer first placed a still-wet plate in a plate holder. He attached it to the back of the camera, removed a cover, aimed the lens at the subject, and exposed the plate to the light for several seconds. To develop the images that had formed on the plates, photographers needed to handle them in completely dark chambers. They coined the term darkroom to describe such a chamber.

A handcart served as a portable darkroom and also carried equipment in the mid 1850s, in the very early days of photography.

Keeping the light out was no problem in the specially constructed darkrooms Brady had installed in his photography studios in New York City and Washington, D.C. There, in the years before the war, he had become the most famous and successful photographer in the country. From presidents and generals to ordinary citizens and soldiers, people came from far and wide to sit for the great Brady of Broadway, as he had come to be called.

But devising a workable mobile darkroom for taking photos on location was a major challenge. Taking pictures was especially difficult in a war. As troops marched to and fro and furious battles erupted in places near and far, photographers had little or no control over their subjects. Moreover, they had to follow them from place to place, often on a moments notice. Horse-drawn wagons were the most effective way to carry photography supplies and mobile darkrooms across the countryside. To keep the darkrooms as light-tight as possible, Brady wrapped heavy sheets of canvas around the wagons wooden walls. But in solving one problem, he had created another. The darkrooms were airtight as well as light-tight. So they became extremely hot inside during the summer. Even worse, they reeked of chemicals, and breathing them caused Brady and his assistants to grow light-headed. While they were developing photos, they had to take breaks and rush outside for fresh air. But during battles the air outside could be just as bad. Instead of chemicals, it reeked of death.

These were only some of the technical obstacles that Brady and other pioneers of photography had to overcome to document the bloody clash between the North and South.

When the American Civil War began in 1861, Brady and some of his competitors leapt into action. Their goal was to create a visual record of the conflict for both the public and posterity. In fact, Brady was among the first photographers to fully recognize the cameras potential for creating a permanent record of important historical events.

Bradys what-is-it wagon and his camera operators were on hand to take photos near Petersburg, Virginia, site of an extended Civil War battle.

The Battle of Gettysburg was just such an event. Fought between July 1 and 3, 1863, it involved 164,000 soldiers. And the number of casualties was enormous. About 28,000 Confederates were killed, wounded, or missing, while the Unions losses were nearly as bad, at roughly 23,000. The battle was not only huge, but also strategically critical. After boldly invading the North through Pennsylvania, the Confederates had to retreat into their own territory. The South was never again able to mount a major offensive in the North.

Because of the battles vital importance, Brady and his competitors had known that demand for any photos relating to Gettysburg would be high. So they had gathered their equipment and hurried to the area in hopes of cashing in. First on the scene was one of the more talented photographers of the timeScottish-born Alexander Gardner. He had worked for Brady for about six years before striking out on his own in 1863. Accompanied by two other former Brady employeesJames Gibson and Timothy OSullivanGardner arrived at Gettysburg around July 5. Brady arrived about July 15.

Alexander Gardner photographed the Civil War from beginning to end. After the war he headed west to photograph the route of the Union Pacific Railroad.

Brady and Gardner each took several of what came to be seen as classic, even iconic, Civil War photos. In fact, among the thousands of pictures Brady and Gardner took in their careers, the ones they produced at Gettysburg rank among their finest.

Each collection, however, has a distinctive overall look and tone. This is mostly because Gardner and Brady arrived at Gettysburg 10 days apart. Gardner got there just two or three days after the fighting. Some of the corpses of men slain in the battle were still strewn about. So most of the shots by Gardner and his associates were gruesome but dramatic.

One of the best known photos shows a group of dead bodies in a wheat field. Another focuses on a dead soldier sprawled between two large boulders in an area known as Devils Den. Evidence shows that the soldiers body was posed for the picture. Gardner and his associates moved the corpse from its original position 72 yards (66 meters) away and carefully arranged it to produce the greatest artistic and shock value.