Civil War

Galleries 21

Collections 141

Groups 22

It used to be that only the wealthy could afford to have a portrait of themselves or their family made. By 1862, Oliver Wendell Holmes noted photography has become, "the social currency, the green-backs of civilization."

The affordability of photographs resulted in soldiers taking pictures wearing their uniforms, with their loved ones, and in the case of cavalry officers - with their horses.

Today, the photographic history of the war is seen more from the camera lens of Northern photographers than Southern.

At the start of the war, it was not uncommon for the only photographer in a small southern town to close up shop and enlist. As the war continued, chemicals needed to create and produce images were not readily available in the South. Lastly, some of the photographs that were produced were destroyed as collateral damage of the war.

All of these images are actual photographs taken during the Civil War and then carefully restored and colored to bring new life to these timeless images. These images are not re-enactments or recreations.