This is one the first war photographs ever taken. The American Civil War took place between 1861 to 1865. Eleven southern slave states of America declared their secession from USA and began to fight for their freedom. These eleven states formed Confederate States of America, also known as “the Confederacy”. The first and only President of the Confederacy was Jefferson Davis. Robert E. Lee was the Commander of the Confederate forces and he won battles in Virgina but took heavy loses in the Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, which was fought from July 1-3, 1863.
"The Harvest of Death". Photograph by Timothy H. O'Sullivan
Today’s photograph was taken by Timothy H. O’Sullivan after the Battle of Gettysburg on 4-5 July 1863. On Internet, several sources provide wrong information about this photograph and credit it to Mathew Brady. The truth is that Timothy was employed by Mathew Brady. Also, this photograph is wrongly shown as having the title “Federal Dead on the Field of Battle of First Day”. But in reality, this photograph is titled “The Harvest of Death”.
The photograph shows a number of corpses of Union soldiers scattered in the battle field. When published the photograph took the horrors of the battle field back to the civil society. As I said, it is one the oldest war photographs -before this the general public had not really seen how the life go waste in war.
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