About the Collection
Civil War: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints provides a sample of the photographs, albums, and documents held by DeGolyer Library that illustrate both the Union and Confederate sides of the U.S. Civil War, 1861-1865. Important materials related to the Civil War are found in several photography accessions, including stereographs, and in collections of manuscripts, maps, period books and some later reunion materials. DeGolyer Library also has a particularly strong set of holdings of Texas-related Civil War images in the Lawrence T. Jones III Texas Photographs collection.
Highlights include:
- Portrait of Union and Confederate generals, officers, and soldiers.
- A , who was the official photographer for the U.S. Military Railroad. His images show the importance of railroads and the Union Army’s military strength.
- Plates, some with related text, from two editions of Alexander Gardner’s seminal 1866 work:
- Photographs by Gardner, including his , are some of the most iconic of the conflict.
- , ca. 1864-1866, by George Barnard, containing 61 prints and an .
- Prints, including many photographs by Mathew Brady, from .
- Stereoviews from the .
- : a Civil War-related album containing 129 photographs made by brothers T. Dwight Biscoe (1840-1930) and Walter S. Biscoe (1853-1933) on a post-Civil War trip through Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania primarily of Civil War battlefields and cemeteries. Mounts include detailed descriptions about the battlefields of Fisher's Hill, Cedar Creek near Winchester, Virginia, Harper's Ferry, Antietam and Hagerstown, Maryland.