the battery in this photograph, and engaged the enemy in a battle on the afternoon of that day from the position occupied by the battery in this picture, the enemy then being intrenched along on the ridge to our front, part of which ridge you see in the picture,-the enemy's line being along by the Taylor chimney. On the night of the 18th we threw up the lunettes in front of our guns. This position was occupied by us until possibly about the 23d or the 24th of June, when we were 'taken farther to the left. The position shown in the picture is about 650 yards in front, and to the right of, the Avery House, and at or near this point was built a permanent fort or battery, which was used continuously during the entire siege of Petersburg. While occupying this position, Mr. Brady took the photographs, copies of which you have sent me. The photographs were taken in the forenoon of June 21, 1864. We had been engaging the enemy occasionally, but at the time Mr. Brady stopped to take the photographs we were not engaged, but all our cannoneers, gunners, and officers took their places, just the same as if they were about to again open up the conflict, and Mr. Brady was getting ready to take the picture. No doubt, the enemy thought we were again preparing to fire, and opened upon us from the ridge in our front (the position from which they fired is not shown in the photo graph, being to the left of any position shown). The firing of the enemy caused Mr. Brady's assistant and horse to break to the rear, upsetting and destroying his chemicals. We did not reply to the enemy's fire, and so, afterward, Mr. Brady returned, and we again "stood up to have our pic tures taken," as you see. I know myself, merely from the position that I occupied at that time, as gunner. After that, I served as Sergeant, First Sergeant, and First Lieutenant, holding the latter position at the close of the war. All the officers shown in this picture are dead. We were merely holding the position to which we had advanced, when the enemy fell back on the night of the 17th of June. From this position we occasionally engaged the enemy, but particularly took a very prominent part in the battle of June 18th. The movement in which we were engaged was the advance of the Army of the Potomac upon Petersburg, being the beginning of operations in front of that city. On June 18th the division of the Confederates which was opposite us was that of Gen. Bushrod R. Johnson; but as the Army of Northern Virginia, under General Lee, began arriving on the evening of June 18th, it would be impossible for me to say who occupied the enemy's lines after that. The enemy's position, which was along on the ridge to the front, in the picture, where you see the chimney, afterward became the main line of the Union Army. Our lines were advanced to that point, and at or about where you see the chimney standing, Fort Morton of the Union line was constructed, and a little farther to the right was Fort Steadman, on the same ridge; and about where the battery now stands, as shown in the picture, was a small fort or works erected, known as Battery Seventeen. When engaged in action, our men exhibit the same coolness that is shown in the picture,-that is, while loading our guns. If the enemy is engaging us, as soon as a gun is loaded, the cannoncers drop to the ground and protect themselves as best they can, except the gunners and the officers, who are expected to be always on the lookout. The gunners are the corporals who sight and direct the iring of the guns. On the photograph you will notice a person in civilian's clothes]. This is Mr. Brady or his assistant, but I think it is Mr. Brady himself. Our battery was part of the division known as the Pennsylvania Reserves, which had for its conmanders Generals Reynolds and Meade, and served from the beginning of the war until the close thereof, that is, from June 8, 1861, to June 9, 1865, and participated in twenty-seven engagements. At this late day, now almost forty-seven years since the photographs were taken, I am able to designate at least fifteen persons of our battery, and point them out. I should have said that Mr. Brady took picture No. I from a point a little to the left and front of our battery; and the second one was taken a little to the rear and left of the battery. Petersburg lay immediately over the ridge in the front, right past the man whom you see sitting there so leisurely on the earthworks thrown up. Again, look at the almost incredible photograph by G. S. Cook taken in Fort Sumter on the 8th of September, 1863, while the Monitor Weehawken, aground near Cummings' Point, was bombarding the fort. Within the muchbattered ruins the Confederate soldiers are scurrying away from their guns while a shell from the Weehawken is actually shown exploding. The twentieth-century photog rapher, with his wonderfully improved paraphernalia, would be put to it to equal this. The later views of eloquent devastation show the resultant chaos with a pair of Confederates amidst the débris; and one may get some idea of what it meant to secure these from the fact that on this occasion the photographer's plate-holder was struck by a piece of shell and knocked into a well. A notice in Humphrey's Journal in 1801 describes vividly the records of the flight after Bull Run secured by the indefatigable Brady. Unfortunately the unique one in which the reviewer identified "Bull Run" Russell in reverse action seems lost to the world. But we have the portrait of Brady himself three days later, in his famous linen duster, as he returne! to Washington. His story comes from one who had it from his own lips: He [Brady] had watched the ebb and flow of th battle on that Sunday morning in July, 1861, ara seen now the success of the green Federal troops under General McDowell in the field, and now the stubborn defense of the green troops under th General Jackson who thereby earned the suby quet of "Stonewall." At last Johnston, who wi Beauregard and Jackson, was a Confederate commander, strengthened by reinforcements, descended upon the rear of the Union troops an! drove them into a retreat which rapidly turne to a rout. The plucky photographer was forced along wit the rest; and as night fell he lost his way in the thick woods which were not far from the litt stream that gave the battle its name. He was ci SHELL FROM A UNION GUNBOAT EXPLODING IN FORT SUMTER ON SEPTEMBER 8, 1863 (This photograph owned by the Daughters of the Confederacy of Charleston, S. C. and the taking of it by G. S. Cook, are fully described in Johnson's "Defense of Charleston Harbor") in the linen duster which was a familiar sight to Much water had flowed under other bridges those who saw him taking his pictures during that than this in that twelvemonth! campaign, and was by no means prepared for a Instances might be multiplied indefinitely, night in the open. He was unarmed as well, and had nothing with which to defend himself from any but here is one more evidence of the quality of the victorious Confederates who might happen of this pictorial record. The same narrator his way, until one of the famous company of "Fire" had from Brady a tale of a picture made a Zouaves, of the Union forces, gave him succor in the shape of a broadsword. This he strapped year and a half later, at the Battle of Fredabout his waist and it was still there when he ericksburg. He says: finally made his way to Washington three days later. He was a sight to behold after his wanderings, but he had come through unscathed, as it was his fate to do so frequently afterward. Things were different when the next year saw dread Bellona again swoop down upon Bull Run, and the lucky photographers had time and safety on August 30, just before the battle, in which to take a peaceful picture of themselves and their outfit above the destroyed railroad bridge at Blackburn's Ford. Burnside, then in command of the Army of the Potomac, was preparing to cross the Rappahannock, and Longstreet and Jackson, commanding the Confederate forces, were fortifying the hills siring as usual to be in the thick of things, underback of the right bank of that river. Brady, detook to make some pictures from the left bank. He placed cameras in position and got his men to work, but suddenly found himself taking a part very different from that of a noncombatant. In the bright sunshine his bulky cameras gleamed like guns, and the Confederate marksmen thought that a battery was being placed in position. They Negative owned and copyrighted by The Patriot Publishing Co., Springfield, Mass. promptly opened fire, and Brady found himself the target for a good many bullets. It was only his phenomenal good luck that allowed him to escape without injury either to himself and men or to his apparatus. It is clearly worth while to study for a few moments this man Brady, who was so ready to risk his life for the idea by which he was obsessed. While the movement soon went far beyond what he or any other one man could possibly have compassed, so that he is probably directly responsible for only a fraction of the whole vast collection of pictures in these volumes, he may fairly be said to have fathered the movement; and his daring and success undoubtedly stimulated and inspired the small army of men all over the war region whose hitherto unrelated work has been laboriously gathered. Mathew B. Brady was born at Cork, Ireland (not in New Hampshire as is generally stated), about 1823. Arriving in New York as a boy, he got a job in the great establishment of A. T. Stewart, first of the merchant princes of that day. The Acknowledgment is due to Charles E. Fairman, of Washington, for many of the biographical details about Brady which immediately follow. youngster's good qualities were so conspicuous that his large-minded employer made it possible for him to take a trip abroad at the age of fifteen, under the charge of S. F. B. Morse, who was then laboring at his epochmaking development of the telegraph. brought over Alexander Gardner, an expert in the new revolutionary wet-plate process, which gave a negative furnishing many prints instead of one unduplicatable original; and in the twenty years between his start and the Civil War he became the fashionable Naturally enough, this scientist took his photographer of his day-as is evidenced not young companion to the laboratory of the only by the superb collection of notable already famous Daguerre, whose arduous ex- people whose portraits he gathered, but by periments in making pictures by sunlight were just approaching fruition; and the wonderful discovery which young Brady's receptive eyes then beheld was destined to determine his whole life work. For that very year (1839) Daguerre made his "daguerreotype" known to the world; and Brady's keen interest was intensified when in 1840, on his own side of the ocean, Professor Draper produced the first photographic portrait the world had yet seen, a likeness of his sister, which required the amazingly short exposure of only ninety seconds! But Brady himself shortly became one of the little group of men who took up the new art and successfully adapted it to commercial uses. It is hard for us to realize to-day that a single lifetime measures the entire history of photography. MATHEW B. BRADY, THE WAR-TIME PHOTOGRAPHER Bret Harte's classic verse (from "Her Letter"): Well, yes-if you saw us out driving Each day in the Park, four-in-hand If you saw poor dear mamma contriving To look supernaturally And flour at Poverty Upon this sunny period of prosperity the Civil War broke in 1861. Brady had made portraits of scores of the men who leaped into still greater prominence as leaders in the terrible struggle: and his vigorous enthusiasm saw in this fierce drama an opportunity to win even brighter laurels. His energy and his acquaintance with men in authority overcame every obstacle, and he succeeded in interesting President Lincoln, Secretary Stanton, Brady's natural business sense and his Allan Pinkerton to such an extent that he mercantile training showed him the chance obtained the protection of the Secret Service, for a career which this new invention and permits to make photographs at the opened, and it was but a short time before front. Everything had to be done at his he had a gallery on Broadway and was own expense, but with entire confidence he well launched upon the new trade of fur- equipped his men, and set out himself as nishing daguerreotype portraits to all comers. well, giving instructions to guard against He was successful from the start; in 1851 breakage by making two negatives of everyhis work took a prize at the London thing, and infusing into all his own ambiWorld's Fair; about the same time he opened tion to astonish the world by this unheardan office in Washington; in the fifties he of feat. |