War Dead

A Confederate Soldier lies Dead on the Field at Gettysburg

Alexander Gardner, a Scottish immigrant and one time disciple to Matthew Brady, was quite talented at moving around Civil War battlefields and capturing grim reality.   In one of Gardner's most famous and most gruesome photos of the effects of combat, he captured this distressing image after the guns at Gettysburg had gone silent.   The man, a Confederate soldier, has been horribly disfigured by what could only have been artillery.  He is almost cut in half and one of his limbs has been severed at the shoulder.   It was July of 1863 and the heat of that time of year has begun to bloat the body.  The face is contorted to an unrecognizable visage.  The lips are swelled and grotesque.   Glancing at the photo, one can easily image the stench and the flies that surely must have surrounded this valiant man's corpse.   He, like so many others, would be later interred where he fell and, if lucky and identifiable, later dug up and taken back to his hometown.  If unlucky, he remained where he was until rain, or wild animals or a farmer's plow pushed his bones back to the surface.   He also may have ended up in a mass grave or under a marker that bore only the word "Unknown."   He may have been from Virginia or Alabama or Texas.  He had, surely, a mother or a family that loved him and, perhaps, never knew his fate. He, like all of us, had his fears and his enjoyments but his were only to last a brief time.   He was  unfortunate not to be able to leave this earth gracefully having known a long and prosperous life.  He couldn't have been a member of a community, aged with those he knew and imparted his life's wisdom on a grandchild bouncing on his knee.  No, he responded to a cause willingly and did what he thought was right and marched so far from home to a little town in Pennsylvania where he breathed his last.  In the end, his reward was the violence that is all too obvious here.   It is almost too much to look at.   Definitely too much to bear.  It must always be remembered that those who fight wars are the ones who suffer the most.   And those of us who advocate the use of violence to achieve an end must always keep in mind that this is the result.

To read more about Alexander Gardner and his extraordinary skill, I encourage you to read my latest book, Route 15 to Gettysburg.  You can find it in print or electronic form at Amazon.com.