Collage of historical images and cartoons of the American Civil War

Visual Culture of the American Civil WarA Special Feature of Picturing US History

Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg

This photograph by Alexander Gardner and Timothy O'Sullivan remains one of the Civil War's more controversial images. The paper print by Gardner from a glass-plate negative by O'Sullivan was included as plate 41 in the first volume of <em>Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War</em>. The image shares a close and revelatory resemblance to the body in plate 40, <em>A Sharpshooter's Last Sleep</em>. Confederate or Union? Sharpshooter or infantryman? The identity of this one fallen soldier in two photographs has provoked a fifty-year debate among scholars about whether the body was moved, Gardner's motivation in taking this image, and the role of photographic credibility in shaping our understanding of the war.This photograph by Alexander Gardner and Timothy O'Sullivan remains one of the Civil War's more controversial images. The paper print by Gardner from a glass-plate negative by O'Sullivan was included as plate 41 in the first volume of Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War. The image shares a close and revelatory resemblance to the body in plate 40, A Sharpshooter's Last Sleep. Confederate or Union? Sharpshooter or infantryman? The identity of this one fallen soldier in two photographs has provoked a fifty-year debate among scholars about whether the body was moved, Gardner's motivation in taking this image, and the role of photographic credibility in shaping our understanding of the war.

Creator: Alexander Gardner

Source: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

Publisher: Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War (Washington, D.C.: Philp & Solomons, c.1866)

Date: July 1863

Rights: Library of Congress