The first images were taken at Sharpsburg by one of Mathew Brady's assistants, Alexander Gardner. Ken Burns does a great job with these images and the voice-over narration from a New York news editorial about them. With a piano version of "Johnny's Gone For A Soldier" in the background, it's very moving.

The dead of the battle-field come up to us very rarely, even in dreams. We see the list in the morning paper at breakfast, but dismiss its recollection with the coffee. There is a confused mass of names, but they are all strangers; we forget the horrible significance that dwells amid the jumble of type.

Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards and along streets, he has done something very like it . . .

http://blog.encyclopediavirginia.org/2008/07/10/fresh-from-the-field/