The Civil War News & Views Open Discussion Forum

Re: The Dead of Antietam
In Response To: Re: Misinformation ()

Joe --

Based on the NYT article titled, "The Dead of Antietam", people who viewed the images left feeling shock and awe.

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 dooryards and along the streets, he has done something very like it.

At the door of his gallery hangs a little placard, "The Dead of Antietam." Crowds of people are constantly going up the stairs; follow them, and you find them bending over photographic views of that fearful battle-field, taken immediately after the action. Of all objects of horror one would think the battle-field should stand preeminent, that it should bear away the palm of repulsiveness.

[T]here is a terrible fascination about it that draws one near these pictures, and makes him loth to leave them. You will see hushed, reverend groups standing around these weird copies of carnage, bending down to look in the pale faces of the dead, chained by the strange spell that dwells in dead men's eyes. It seems somewhat singular that the same sun that looked down on the faces of the slain, blistering them, blotting out from the bodies all semblance to humanity, and hastening corruption, should have thus caught their features upon canvas, and given them perpetuity for ever. But so it is.

Union soldier and Confederate, side by side, here they lie, the red light of battle faded from their eyes but [???] set as when they met in the last fierce change which located their souls and sent them grappling with each other and battling to the very grass of Heaven. . . . But there is a poetry in the scene that no green holds or smiling landscapes can possess. Here lie men who have not hesitated to seal and lamp their convictions with their blood. . . .

Doesn't sound like a morale builder, certainly not government-sponsored.

Messages In This Thread

Misinformation
Re: Misinformation
Re: Misinformation
Re: The Dead of Antietam
Re: The Dead of Antietam
Re: The Dead of Antietam
Re: The Dead of Antietam
Re: The Dead of Antietam
Re: The Dead of Antietam