Volume 5, Issue 2 - December 2007

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3-D Anaglyph Photographs Exhibit

View Civil War photographs in amazing 3-D using anagylph (red/cyan) glasses...

Volume 5, Issue 2 - December 2007

Lincoln Found At Gettysburg

The Story Behind the Story
By Bob Zeller

Last February, CCWP board member John Richter tackled a project he had meant to do for some time and began to take a very close look in 3D at Alexander Gardner’s three stereo images of the consecration of the Gettysburg National Cemetery, where Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address.

John was in the first stages of helping me prepare my Lincoln in 3D slide show, which we premiered to The Lincoln Forum in Gettysburg on Nov. 17.

He converted the images to 3D anaglyph (red-blue) photos and, using The Center for Civil War Photography’s recently purchased 30-inch monitor and computer, began to explore the stereographs. Previously, the three images were thought to simply show the crowd at the ceremony.

In a discovery by CCWP Director of Imaging John Richter, the unmistakable profile of Abraham Lincoln emerges from the depths of a stereo photograph by Alexander Gardner taken on Nov. 19, 1863 at the consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, where Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. In this first of two images, the president is seen as he arrives at the cemetery and rides down a lane created by lines of troops and cavalrymen on either side. (Library of Congress. Detail by Center for Civil War Photography).

His practiced 3D eye began to take in a wealth of photographic information, including the masses of soldiers and cavalrymen gathered before the distant speaker’s stand, the parade marshals with their large white sashes, and the gatehouse of Evergreen Cemetery. One of the first things John realized was that the 3D seemed to get better as he zoomed in on the scenes.

In two of the images, one figure stood out from the rest of the crowd—a bearded man on horseback wearing a large top hat. Near the man on horseback, John noticed that someone was carrying a large, eagle-adorned standard, which appeared to be a flagpole without a flag.

John thought, "Could that man be Lincoln?"

Months later, after more research and examination, the Center for Civil War Photography went public with John’s discovery. On Nov. 16, it made national news when it appeared on the front page of USA Today. He was interviewed by FOX national news, other regional television stations, and several Pennsylvania newspapers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer. The Library of Congress, which owns the original negatives, has also taken note of the discovery on its web pages for the two images, with a referral on each to The Center for Civil War Photography.

Not everyone, to be sure, is convinced that the man in the two images is Lincoln. One doubter is photohistorian William A. Frassanito, who believes that the figure is most likely not Lincoln. But John’s arguments are compelling, and provided more than enough justification to bring the discovery to light, and open the discussion on the intriguing scenes deep within these two photos. The net result has been a tremendous boost for The Center for Civil War Photography and the field of Civil War Photography in general.

No one can say with 100 percent certainty at this point that the top-hatted man in the two images is Lincoln, just as no one can say with absolute certainty that it is Lincoln in the other two Gettysburg images taken on Nov. 19, 1863 in which he has been identified. But the visual evidence is compelling, and it is backed up by documentary evidence and accounts by people who attended the ceremony.

In the second of two Gardner images showing the crowd at the National Cemetery on the day of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Lincoln can be seen saluting to the troops with his white-gloved left hand as he rides down a corridor created for him by troops and cavalrymen. The salute is particularly apparent in 3D versions of the image. The president is a tiny speck in the larger twin-image stereo negative at the Library of Congress. (Call number LC-B815- 1160).

Why did no one find Lincoln in these photos before now? That is a difficult question to answer. Lincoln is clearly somewhere in these pictures. And it doesn’t take a tremendous amount of magnification before this distinctive top-hatted man is visible. John’s advantage, however, was that he was able to enlarge a special set of extremely high resolution images and to see them in 3D.

Lincoln might have been found sooner in these images were it not for a stroke of misfortune. In September 2000, Lincoln photography expert Lloyd Ostendorf asked me whether I might be able to obtain for him extreme blowups from the original stereoscopic negatives through the photoduplication service of the Library of Congress. He was convinced that he could find Lincoln, just as had been done in the depths of two other images taken at Gettysburg on Nov. 19, 1863, the day of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

In 1952, Josephine Cobb of the National Archives had found Lincoln on the speaker’s stand in the depths of a photo probably taken by David Bachrach. And in 1993, Arthur L. Strawbridge had located Lincoln in a Tyson Brothers albumen print, now owned by Frassanito, that shows the procession on Baltimore Street on its way to the cemetery.

The photoduplication service was one of the more challenging branches of the Library of Congress to work with at the time, and I had made little progress on the request when Lloyd died suddenly on Oct. 27, 2000. His lifelong quest to find new Lincoln images came to an end, as did my efforts on his behalf.

That same year, the library began its comprehensive digitizing project, and by 2007, more than 5,000 Civil War photographs and stereographs were online, available for free to anyone with a computer. The library provides both low and high resolution downloads online, but they also created archival scans of all of the images at much higher resolution, with files that are more than four times larger than largest online files.

In John’s initial examination of the Gardner Gettysburg ceremony stereos in mid-February 2007, he used the best files available online. Despite their relative high quality, the images began to pixellate, or deteriorate, before he could zoom in close enough to clearly see the top-hatted man.

"I’ve been looking at the 3 LOC stereos of the dedication at Gettysburg," he wrote to me in a Feb. 23 e-mail. "I’ve looked at them in stereo and there’s a lot going on in each one. What I need is the LOC Master Archived Image of each one."

This is the full frame stereoscopic negative (Library of Congress Call number LC-B815-1159) of the crowd at the Gettysburg Address, which also shows Lincoln arriving for the consecration ceremony (see cover image). The approximate location of this figure in the larger is shown by the line in the left-hand image of the stereo negative.

I made the arrangements with Library of Congress Curator of Photographs Carol Johnson. On March 14, John downloaded the master versions.

"I’ve spent all evening viewing them in 3D," he wrote that night. "I just wish I could get in closer, I think I see something but I’m not 100% sure."

John was already convinced he had found Lincoln, but I was planning a visit to his home in Hanover, Pa., and he wanted me to see the top-hatted man on my own without any suggestion from him as to who it might be.

During my visit on April 3, I was mesmerized by the panoramic qualities and outstanding depth of the stereographs as they appeared on the CCWP’s big monitor. Images that I had previously judged to be nondescript crowd shots with boys posing and mugging in front of the camera now came alive. I agreed with John that the 3D qualities seemed to improve the deeper you went into the photos.

To me, the distinctive top-hatted man on horseback bore the unmistakable profile of Lincoln. As my friend John Beshears said, "If he’s not Lincoln, he is everyone’s idea of Lincoln." In the second image, he was saluting. What other civilian but the commander in chief would salute the troops?

John demonstrated that the two images were taken just moments apart, probably within a minute of each other, and that they worked in tandem almost like two frames of a movie. He showed how soldiers on horseback pressed forward toward Lincoln from the first to the second images, and how little Lincoln moved between the two images.

If Gardner was simply trying to take crowd shots, why did he take two exposures so quickly? John asked. The fact that the negatives survived, but no extant prints on original mounts have ever been found, suggested that Gardner was disappointed with his results, John said. Gardner had photographed the president, yes, but Lincoln was so small in the picture, he was all but invisible. And Gardner could not make enlargements or blowups at the necessary depth back then.

I, for one, was convinced, not only by the distinctive Lincoln profile, but by John’s analysis. This was a logical explanation of why the negatives were taken, but no prints apparently were made. Gardner had to have a platform to shoot from so his camera would be above the mounted horsemen in front of him, but the platform provided for him was too far removed from the actionâ€”so far back that there was plenty of open space between him and the back edge of the crowd.

"I’m still in amazement with your discoveries on the dedication stereos," I e-mailed John two days later. "We can absolutely blow that group [Lincoln Forum] away with this. We can blow them away just like you blew me away!! I’ve never felt the intimacy with an image to the extent that I felt Tuesday night while we were deep in the depths of those images! Wow."

Richter responded: "I’ve tried to read everything I could on (the dedication ceremony), but that night, looking at those long-ago images in stereo, I felt like I was there!" We agreed that the best way to see the images, by far, was to see the highest resolution versions in 3D on the CCWP’s big monitor.

Although we discussed at the time the need to do an article to ‘out’ the photos, John wanted to do further research, and other projects pushed their way to the top of our CCWP priority list, including John’s work with 99 Historic Photos of Harpers Ferry and with our Lincoln in 3D show.

The genesis of the national media coverage began on Monday, Nov. 12. By this time, the Lincoln in 3D digital slide show was nearly complete and, in the show, John presented the two images in much the same fashion that I had originally seen them—by zooming in again and again and again until Lincoln stood out plainly.

I knew that this aspect of the show would be electrifying to the Lincoln Forum. No one had ever shown anything like this before. I thought we might be able to get some press on this, too, and was assessing my media options when the phone rang. It was Ron Coddington, CCWP member and a visual journalist at USA Today.

In a matter of seconds, I was telling Ron about John’s discoveries. I extracted small thumbnails of the Lincoln images from the files on my computer.

"WOW! I can see him in profile," Ron e-mailed. "My heart jumped in the moment I saw him. Very, very impressive. Spoke with my boss, who was very intrigued. [I am] identifying key people now to get this on the radar."

Later that same day, Ron saw the highest resolution versions for the first time, and was even further convinced. But others weren’t. Ron thought the paper would do a story, but wasn’t positive.

I arranged with John to e-mail me anaglyph 3D versions of the photos, which I forwarded to Ron. Then I Fed-Exed him a couple of pairs of red-blue 3D glasses. They arrived at USA Today on Wednesday afternoon, Nov. 14.

"HOLY COW!!!!!" Ron e-mailed. "Awesome. The 3D version is truly remarkable. The 2D images have attracted attention here for sure, but the 3D is blowing people (including me) away. In short, the 3D really brings it home. In fact, two of my co-workers who were skeptical on viewing the 2D version became absolutely convinced that it was indeed Lincoln after viewing the 3D."

Since no one had seen the Lincoln images other than John and his family, me and CCWP Vice President Garry Adelman, we had no Lincoln scholars to weigh in on the find for USA Today. I knew the editors would want an independent assessment from someone.

So I turned to Harold Holzer, senior vice president of external communications of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, who is a Lincoln scholar with more than 30 books to his credit. Holzer is also the co-chairman of the Lincoln Forum.

His response soon arrived by e-mail: "All I can say is wow! Unbelievable…I’m ready for USA Today if you have them call."

The 3D viewing at USA Today and Holzer’s enthusiastic endorsement pushed the story onto the front page of the national newspaper weekend edition of Friday-Sunday, Nov. 16-18, and it immediately generated a large response, both pro and con, particularly online.

"I’ve looked at the digital files from the Library of Congress and from my perspective, the jury’s still out on whether that’s really Honest Abe," said photohistorian Wm. B. Becker. "But the real story here is about using technology to peer into the past. And it’s also about private individuals doing the heavy lifting of historical research. It was great to see USA Today and some other news outlets picking up on that."

For believers, the operative cliché is: "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck."

For doubters, the more appropriate cliché is: "Looks are deceiving."

For Frassanito, the most significant problem with the figure being Lincoln is that the president should already be on the speaker’s stand in these two photos. To Bill, the speaker’s stand appears full, and because Lincoln led the procession of dignitaries to the cemetery, he should be up there among them.

John and I don’t believe the speaker’s stand is necessarily full, and John plans to respond to all of the counter arguments in a fully footnoted article that he is currently working on.

Some doubters assert that the man or horseback is Ward Hill Lamon, Lincoln’s personal bodyguard and the organizer and grand marshal of the ceremony. But Lamon appears next to Lincoln in the Bachrach photo, and he is wearing one of the wide, white sashes worn by marshals that day. John’s Lincoln is not wearing a sash.

Attendees at The Lincoln Forum in Gettysburg prepare to watch the premier showing of Lincoln in 3D, a new 30-minute digital slide presentation by CCWP President Bob Zeller and CCWP Director of Imaging John Richter that features 164 3D photographs of Abraham Lincoln, his presidency and the Civil War. The show includes a detailed look at the two ‘new’ images of Lincoln taken just before he delivered the Gettysburg Address. The presentation, which was covered by two local television stations, was shown on Saturday, Nov. 17 during Remembrance Day weekend. (Photo by John Richter).

Meanwhile, the Library of Congress has agreed to scan at even higher resolution the area that includes Lincoln in at least one of the stereo negatives, Curator of Photographs Carol Johnson said a few days after the news broke. John and I made the request in hopes that an even higher resolution scan of the Lincolnesque profiles in these images would give us a closer look and perhaps reveal the mourning ribbon that the president was wearing around his top hat in memory of his late son, Willie.

John spent much of Nov. 16 and the two following days either talking with print reporters or being interviewed in front of a TV camera. We also managed to squeeze in the premier of the Lincoln in 3D digital slide show to the Lincoln Forum. The show is a 30 minute presentation with 164 3D digital images—a journey from the beginning to the end of the Civil War. Among the rare and choice views in this presentation are a dozen portraits of Lincoln, four views of Lincoln in the field, three stereographs of the execution of the Lincoln conspirators, a selection of funeral views and scenes of his final resting place in Springfield, IL. Even without the new images of Lincoln at Gettysburg, the show provides an unprecedented look at his presidency, and the standing-room-only crowd of more than 300 at the Lincoln Forum agreed.

Harpers Ferry Captured At Image of War Seminar

The image came to life on the screen showing only a worn pair of Civil War shoes. It was an obscure detail from a much larger photo, but what photo was it?

After a few seconds, a voice in the crowd yelled, "Dunker Church, Antietam." And indeed it was, as the projector zoomed out to reveal the familiar whitewashed church with the dead Confederate artillerymen near their limber.

On a hazy October day at The Point in Harper’s Ferry, W. Va., attendees at the seventh annual Image of War seminar listen to CCWP Vice President Garry Adelman talk about the Civil War photographs created at that hotbed of the conflict. (Photo by Bob Zeller).

It was Friday night at the Image of War seminar, which of course meant another round of the Civil War Photo Quiz, a yearly favorite on the opening evening of the event, the seventh annual of which was held October 5-7 in Frederick, Md., and focused on Harpers Ferry, W. Va.

The seminar opened with Center For Civil War Photography Vice President Garry Adelman’s Harpers Ferry slide show, which was part military, part logistics, part then and now, and part discussion of seminar co-sponsor Civil War Preservation Trust’s fight for justice in the 2006 desecration by developers of protected Harpers Ferry land. But this seminar broke new ground as well. The keynote speaker for the evening was Shenandoah University professor Geraldine Kiefer, who discussed the images of Harpers Ferry from an artist’s perspective and displayed her extensive collection of images of the town.

The next morning, our group of 66 traveled to the historic town itself for a guided tour by veteran park ranger John King. The tour was supplemented and enhanced by CCWP’s latest publication, 99 Historic Images of Harpers Ferry, the fifth in our series of soft-cover books, each tailor-made for one of the seminars. King’s tour was followed by lunch provided by the Odd Fellows at their historic Lodge in the upper part of Harpers Ferry. The building still contains Civil War soldier graffiti.

On Saturday afternoon, National Park Service Ranger Mike Gorman, who has become one of our regular presenters, gave a fascinating program, From Harpers Ferry to the Bottom of the Ocean in 45 Minutes, in which he managed to identify one of passengers who went down on the RMS Titanic as a Civil War veteran who, almost 50 years earlier, had been photographed by Brady with other Union soldiers at their camp at Camp Hill. Our group also stood at the site where one of the most extensive series of Civil War photos ever recorded was taken—the 22^nd New York State National Guard atop Camp Hill in 1862. This Brady series also includes images of the hapless Dixon Miles at Camp Hill just a month before his mass surrender of Union troops, which came shortly before his own mortal wounding at Harper’s Ferry.

Next was a visit to the Pry Farm, Gen. George McClellan’s headquarters during the battle of Antietam. Here, our group experienced another seminar firstâ€”a program on medical photography. A seminar co-sponsor, the Frederickbased National Museum of Civil War Medicine, runs a satellite medical museum at the Pry House. Its executive director, George Wunderlich, provided a fascinating slide show, Art Helping Science: Medical Photography in the Civil War, in which he demonstrated the importance of the photographic medium to understanding wartime medicine. When the group adjourned from the program, they were greeted by a small field hospital scene and a photographic recreation by wet plate photographer and CCWP board member Rob Gibson.

During a visit by the Image of War seminar to Camp Hill in upper Harper’s Ferry, CCWP member Mike Gorman talks about the images made there by Mathew Brady as CCWP Vice President Garry Adelman displays a reproduction of one of the photos. (Photo by Bob Zeller).

That evening, following a buffet dinner at the Frederick Holiday Inn, CCWP President Bob Zeller gave an illustrated lecture about Confederate photographer George S. Cook, suggesting that perhaps he was the Civil War’s greatest photographer. Bob’s talk preceded another seminar staple, the annual CCWP raffle.

Thanks to the generosity of our members and seminar attendees, this year’s raffle was the most successful ever, with more than $2,300 in receipts, all of which will go directly to CCWP operating costs. This year’s prizes included actual pieces of a Gettysburg Cyclorama canvas and a real brick from Gettysburg’s Wills House, where Abraham Lincoln stayed when he was in Gettysburg. These were donated by the Gettysburg Foundation and scores of other items were provided by numerous people and organization including Thomas Publications, The Harpers Ferry Historical Association, Eastern National, CCWP, and many others. For night owls, Zeller followed the raffle with a 3-D slide show, The Best Photos of the Civil War in 3D, including a preview of his upcoming Lincoln in 3D show.

The next morning, after a full breakfast, the group was treated to a presentation by author and historian Don Wickman, who detailed the work of yet another little-known Civil War photographer, George Houghton from Vermont. The final presentation was by CCWP up-and-comer Jason Wickersty, who gave his Washington in Spring slide show, a fascinating program where he made the area of Washington, D.C. just west of the White House come alive using seemingly uninteresting photographs of the military shops, warehouses and buildings that were located there during the Civil War. Wickersty also showed us one of the world’s first photographic interlopers—a random civilian who managed to show up in more than a dozen of the images. Wickersty named him the "The Woo Guy" after sports fans who get in front of the camera to shout "woo, woo," and call attention to themselves.

As the formal part of the seminar came to an end, our guests were encouraged to avail themselves on their own of all that Frederick had to offer, including the new and improved Monocacy National Battlefield as well as the impressive National Museum of Civil War Medicine.

It was a great time for all and next years event is being planned for another photo-rich site—Petersburg, Virginia. Hope to see you there! The program is set for the weekend of Oct. 3-5.

CCWP Donates Digital Scans To Gettysburg National Military Park

By Garry E. Adelman

The Center for Civil War Photography has donated to the Gettysburg National Military Park (GNMP) and the Adams County Historical Society (ACHS) more than 1,100 high resolution digital scans of Gettysburg negatives and the largest compilation of Gettysburg "then & now" pairs ever assembled.

Both projects, the negative scanning and the interactive CD-Rom of "then & now" pairs, were years in the making but came to fruition at the same time.

"This is great!" said Wayne Motts, ACHS Executive Director. "This will help our staff and researchers in our ongoing work with the photographs of Gettysburg."

"This is only the beginning of The Center’s goal to create a digital library of every Civil War-related documentary photo we can obtain," said CCWP President Bob Zeller.

The negative scanning project was conceived in 2000 when an anonymous donor gave the CCWP more than 1,100 copy negatives of the GNMP spanning from the 1920s to the 1970s.
Over a four-year period, CCWP volunteer Denise Campbell and Director John Richter scanned each image at high resolution and organized them on a spreadsheet. "The high-resolution scans allow us to conduct research into the park in detail that would have been much more difficult with prints and negatives," said Petersen.

CCWP Vice President Garry Adelman presents digital resources to Adams County Historical Society Director of Collections Benjamin Neely. (Photo by Robert Housch).

To complete the project and prepare the images for online indexing, the CCWP sought volunteer help from its members to write titles and captions for the images. The efforts of Alice Bampton, Barry Gingrich, Barry Larkin, Barry Martin, Don Moody, John Kelley, Michael Schneider, Rick Walton and CCWP Development Director Charles Morongiello are much appreciated. We expect to have these 1,100 images available online early in 2008, if not sooner.

The CD-Rom project was born as three CCWP members, myself, Barry Martin and Tom Danninger, began to systematically find the locations of all 235 images in the published book, The Gettysburg National Military Park Commission Reports, 1893-1904. "Copies of the book are hard to come by and most of the images within appear nowhere else," Martin said. Over a five-year period, we scanned all of the images and began pairing them together using an interactive map with the modern images recorded from the same place. The final product has 18 interactive maps allowing users to roam the battlefield of more than a century ago and compare it with that of today.

In other digital archive developments, the CCWP thanks the Lee Gallery in Winchester, Ma., and Mack Lee for their donation of digital scans of 40 of the images from Gardner’s Sketch Book of the Civil War. These will soon be incorporated into our online presentation.
In another project for the digital archives, Zeller flew to Houston, Tex., in mid-September with a scanner in his suitcase for a grueling scanning session with member Robin Stanford, who has the largest privately held collection of Civil War stereoviews known to exist.

CCWP member Robin Stanford and President Bob Zeller spent the better part of 48 hours during three days in September scanning rare stereo views from Stanford’s ummatched collection of 3D Civil War photographs. The scans will be incorporated into the CCWP digitizing project. (Self-timed photo by Bob Zeller).

Stopping only for meals, short breaks and sleep, and scanning well past midnight on two nights, Zeller and Stanford worked side by side from the afternoon on Sept. 16 until the afternoon of the 18^th, with Zeller scanning the images at high resolution on his scanner and laptop, and Stanford scanning the back of the cards on her scanner and desktop computer.

This mini-assembly line produced scans of 400 stereo views, front and back, or about one-fifth of Stanford’s collection. They concentrated their efforts on those images in her collection that cannot be found at Library of Congress or otherwise cannot be easily obtained, including her unmatched group of original Osborn & Durbec Confederate images, her early Anthony camp views and a series of plantation scenes by Beaufort, S.C., photographers Hubbard and Mix.

"Eager for the Fray"

1st Lt. James Trimble Brown, Confederate States Army
By Ron Coddington
(From Faces of the Confederacy: An Album of Southern Soldiers and Their Stories, to be published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in the Fall of 2008).

Carte de visite by Frederick Newton Hughes and Thomas F. Saltsman, Nashville, Tenn., circa 1865-66. (Author’s collection).

Before dawn on July 13, 1862, about 1,400 gray horsemen led by Brig. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest raided Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and launched a surprise attack on its unsuspecting 934-man garrison. At one point during the ensuing fight, Forrest rode up to one of his subordinates, Maj. Baxter Smith, and asked him if his Tennesseans could capture part of a hastily formed Union line held by the Third Minnesota Infantry, supported by four cannon. The major turned to his troopers. He looked upon the face of his nineteen-year-old aide, 1^st Lt. James Trimble "Trim" Brown, and saw a young man "eager for the fray." His expression, and those of the other men, inspired the major to answer in the affirmative. The Tennessee cavalrymen promptly charged and took the position. Forrest’s force later captured the entire garrison and a vast quantity of supplies. Maj. Smith said of Trim: "No one on that memorable day bore himself more gallantly or acted his part better."

Those who knew Trim would have expected nothing less, for he hailed from a family of leaders. Neill Brown, his father, served as governor of Tennessee during the Mexican War. His uncle, John C. Brown, became a Confederate general. Trim grew up the eldest of eight brothers and sisters in Pulaski. "Carefully educated" by his parents, he taught in a Nashville public school after graduation. He joined the army after the war began, and served in all three branches of the military.

Trim started as an artillery lieutenant. In 1862, he learned that Forrest had received permission to organize a cavalry brigade to operate in middle Tennessee, which included his home in Union-occupied Nashville. He sought out Maj. Baxter Smith, and asked to join his staff. Smith agreed, he later said, "because of my knowledge and admiration for his father and the family." In September 1862, about two months after the great raid on Murfreesboro, his Uncle John, an infantry brigadier in the Army of Tennessee, nominated him as one of his aides-de-camp. Trim joined his uncle, and served with distinction in the 1863 battles of Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. The following year he left the staff as a captain, an unconfirmed rank, and returned to the cavalry as an assistant adjutant general in the Army of Tennessee, where he remained until the surrender of the army in North Carolina in April 1865.

Brown returned to Nashville, married, and started a family that grew to include two sons and a daughter. He became an attorney and, driven by a burning ambition tempered by a modest, affable nature, established a reputation as one of the most promising young members of the city’s bar. He became a candidate for district attorney general in 1878. On May 31, during the campaign, he participated in Decoration Day ceremonies honoring Union war dead. He became overheated and afterwards stopped at a restaurant for a cup of tea. He complained of feeling poorly. His condition worsened. Someone on the scene sent for Trim’s brother-in-law, a physician. Concerned citizens carried the ailing young man to the doctor’s residence. By this time he lapsed into unconsciousness, and remained in this state until his death at 12:30 a.m. the next morning. He was thirty-six.

Some blamed his death on the fatigue suffered while paying respects to his former foes on Decoration Day. Griefstricken lawyers met and spoke of his untimely passing and praised a life cut tragically short. One attorney compared Trim to former Nashville-area resident and U.S. president Andrew Jackson: "In war he exhibited the heroism of a soldier. He possesses as high an order of courage as ever characterized the Hero of the Hermitage, and was as knightly and heroic in his bearing." A formal statement issued by the bar included the phrase, "His life was brief, beautiful and brilliant."

"Few funerals that were as largely reported have ever occurred in Nashville," recounted the local newspaper. A lengthy procession included the local militia to which Trim belonged, with two guns suitably draped for the sad occasion, and a hearse trimmed with black plumes and drawn by four white horses. Trim’s rider-less horse followed, "in trappings of mourning, the helmet formerly worn by Lieut. Brown resting upon the horn of the saddle." After the memorial service, the procession moved to Mt. Olivet Cemetery for the interment of his remains. Artillerymen fired a six-gun salute after the burial.

Instantaneous Views

New Membership Levels and Members: The Center for Civil War Photography has adjusted its upperlevel memberships. The prices for basic memberships have not changed, and remain at $35 for individuals, $50 for families and $25 for students.

Our membership opportunities now include the "ambrotype" level at $100. Members who join at this level are named in our newsletter and receive their choice of three 99 Historic Images books. Our $250 "daguerreotype" level member is listed as a supporter in newsletter and receive all five of our 99 Historic Images books.

Our top membership level is the $500 Folio member. These members are named in the newsletter and receive all five books as well as a gouache (11 x 14 inch unframed canvas transfer oil painting) of Alexander Gardner at the Slaughter Pen at Gettysburg signed by artist Rick Reeves.

The CCWP would like to thank new members joining at these upper levels. We had our first Folio member in 2007 in Justin Shaw. We’ve also had three members join at the ambrotype level. They are Lenny Baumbaugh, Michael Schneider and Steve and Sharon Williams.

Our Benefactor: The CCWP’s primary benefactor continues to be the Earl Knudsen Charitable Foundation of Pittsburgh, Pa. For the sixth straight year, the Knudsen Foundation gave us another $10,000 general operating grant. These annual grants have made the financial difference for the CCWP, giving us enough funding to pay for administrative costs and to purchase needed equipment, such as our new computer and monitor and the two digital projectors we need to present digital 3D shows. We’d like to take a moment to thank the Knudsen Foundation for its continuing support.

Director of Imaging: CCWP board member John Richter was appointed as the Center’s new Director of Imaging at the Nov. 20 board meeting. Richter has been instrumental in helping prepare the Center’s series of 99 Historic Images books. He is also producing the new digital 3D slide show of Civil War photos for The Civil War Life Museum in Fredericksburg, Va., and has been heavily involved in other Center projects.

Partnership for History: CCWP is working with the Adams County Historical Society in Gettysburg with their Battle of Gettysburg Research Center inside Schmucker Hall on the campus of the Lutheran Theological Seminary. The society will seek working relationships with other organizations, too, such as the National Park Service and the Gettysburg battlefield licensed guides, to digitize documents and photographs related to the battle of Gettysburg and make them accessible to the public. The society hope to open the Center next month. Society members can do research at no charge; non-members will continue to pay the $5 daily fee for research.

Auction Results: Civil War photographs often exceeded auction estimates in 2007, but there were still bargains to be had.

In Cowan’s Historic Americana Auction on June 6-7, a quarter plate ambrotype of a New York volunteer, complete with sword, was estimated at $400-500, but went for a bargain price of $258.75, including buyer’s premium.
A lot of 31 yellow mount Anthony War for the Union stereo view cards in great condition was estimated at $1,000-1,500, but commanded $5,175, or more than $166 each.
A mounted albumen print of Capt. A. J. Russell’s famous photo of dead Confederates along the Stone Wall at Fredericksburg after the battle of May 3, 1863 sold for $2,760. The estimate was $800-1000.
A carte de visite of Civil War photographer Timothy O’Sullivan, taken circa 1871-74 by F. G. Ludlow of Carson City, Nev., was estimated at $2,000-3,000, but sold for $4,025 with buyer’s premium.

New Civil War Photo Books—Two new Civil War photo books are among the ever-growing number of new books on our greatest conflict. Images of Civil War Medicine: A Photographic History (2007, Demos Medical Publishing) by Dr. Gordon Dammann and Dr. Alfred J. Bollet, features hundreds of images, many previously unpublished on the printed page, from the private collection of Dr. Dammann, founder of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, Md. The publisher says that the soft-cover book, which retails for $34.95, is a "visual encyclopedia that covers all aspects of Civil War medicine."

Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Tennessee in the Civil War (2007, University of Arkansas Press), is a 430-page hard cover book that includes 250 photos and illustrations, mostly portraits of Tennessee soldiers. Author Richard B. McCaslin provides detailed descriptions of the documentary photos and fascinating profiles of the men shown in the portraits. This is the eighth volume in the Portraits of Conflict series.

First Look at a Plantation Image This rare image, probably published here on the printed page for the first time, shows a former slave with a horse and buggy at a coastal South Carolina plantation. The Civil War-era carte de visite, taken by Beaufort, S.C.’s Hubbard & Mix, is one of the images CCWP has digitized from Robin Stanford’s collection (see page 7). In our next newsletter, we’ll feature previously unpublished Hubbard & Mix stereo views of plantation scenes taken on St. Helena Island from a series of images related to a school for black children created by Miss Laura Towne of Philadelphia, Pa. The facility still operates today as Penn Center. (Collection of Robin Stanford).

First Look at a Plantation ImageThis rare image, probably published here on the printed page for the first time, shows a former slave with a horse and buggy at a coastal South Carolina plantation. The Civil War-era carte de visite, taken by Beaufort, S.C.’s Hubbard & Mix, is one of the images CCWP has digitized from Robin Stanford’s collection (see page 7). In our next newsletter, we’ll feature previously unpublished Hubbard & Mix stereo views of plantation scenes taken on St. Helena Island from a series of images related to a school for black children created by Miss Laura Towne of Philadelphia, Pa. The facility still operates today as Penn Center. (Collection of Robin Stanford).

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