Custer Captures a Classmate

During the battle of Fair Oaks on May 31, 1862, Confederate Lt. J. B. Washington was captured by Union pickets. When Lt. George Armstrong Custer discovered that his old West Point classmate was a federal prisoner, he arranged to have James F. Gibson make a stereograph of them together. This image is reproduced from a modern contact print made from the 138-year-old stereoscopic glass plate negative. It is one of 658 full stereoscopic negatives listed in the Library of Congress's collection of several thousand Civil War photographic negatives.