Civil War photographs capture the horror of fighting for liberty
A city lies in charred ruins, empty windows bleak oblongs of light in fragile orphaned walls. It might easily be mistaken for a German city in 1945 but this is Richmond, Virginia, in April 1865. Its tall slivers of brick rising from an ashen wasteland are the remains of factories set alight by the Confederacy as it vacated its capital.
During the American civil war the southern "rebel" states fought to save slavery, and Richmond was their seat of government. Its evacuation was the south's death-blow and the fires in the city's industrial district were started by the rebels themselves to deny anything of military or industrial value to Lincoln's victorious Union. This came after the apocalyptic last months of the war. Atlanta had fallen in September 1864 to General William Tecumseh Sherman, who then decided the best way to finally crush Southern resistance was to march through Georgia, liberating slaves and despoiling estates built on human exploitation. Sherman began by burning everything of military value in Atlanta, then marched seaward to make Georgia "howl". After his devastating 250-mile rampage he entered South Carolina, whose state capital Columbia was burned in one drunken night. On April 2 the Confederate government abandoned Richmond, this time setting the fires itself.
Alexander Gardner's photographs of Richmond's burned district are massively bleak images. They might have given 20th-century warriors pause if properly studied for already, in 1865, they show what total war looks like. A modern society stands hollowed by fire, its deathly facades reflected in still silent water. These scenes of urban devastation are among the last shots taken of the American civil war, which generated many powerful photographic images. The slow exposure times of 19th-century photography make it an eerie witness of the aftermath of battle, and photographs of battlefields strewn with the dead were taken in desolate abundance by Gardner, Matthew Brady, and other pioneer war photographers...
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During the American civil war the southern "rebel" states fought to save slavery, and Richmond was their seat of government. Its evacuation was the south's death-blow and the fires in the city's industrial district were started by the rebels themselves to deny anything of military or industrial value to Lincoln's victorious Union. This came after the apocalyptic last months of the war. Atlanta had fallen in September 1864 to General William Tecumseh Sherman, who then decided the best way to finally crush Southern resistance was to march through Georgia, liberating slaves and despoiling estates built on human exploitation. Sherman began by burning everything of military value in Atlanta, then marched seaward to make Georgia "howl". After his devastating 250-mile rampage he entered South Carolina, whose state capital Columbia was burned in one drunken night. On April 2 the Confederate government abandoned Richmond, this time setting the fires itself.
Alexander Gardner's photographs of Richmond's burned district are massively bleak images. They might have given 20th-century warriors pause if properly studied for already, in 1865, they show what total war looks like. A modern society stands hollowed by fire, its deathly facades reflected in still silent water. These scenes of urban devastation are among the last shots taken of the American civil war, which generated many powerful photographic images. The slow exposure times of 19th-century photography make it an eerie witness of the aftermath of battle, and photographs of battlefields strewn with the dead were taken in desolate abundance by Gardner, Matthew Brady, and other pioneer war photographers...