From the New York Evening Post, 7/22/1862, p. 1

The Battle Field Brought Home.

If we could imagine some soothsayer of old saying to the people of Rome, when their armies were gone forth to the battle in distant lands: "Come to me, and I will show you your soldiers on the field of battle; I will show them to you in their armor and with their gleaming helmets flashing to the sun, as when they marched upon the battle field; I will show you the very ronk from which our great Imperator harangued his troops near the Rubicon; I will show you the very trees beneath which this general and that soldier met his death" - and then let him proceed to display his promised skill to the teeming multitudes, and let history record the fact that he kept his promise, and did as he said he would - if we could imagine all this, would not such a story be read at the present day with amused incredulity, and be classed only with the oracles and other pompous humbugs of antiquity?

Yet this is just what is now taking place in our city. The soothsayer is Brady the photographer, and the Rome is at his gallery, corner of Broadway and Tenth street. The wonderful series of pictures he there exhibits are certainly foremost among the triumphs of photographic art. His artists have followed our army from Bull Run to Richmond, and at the recent retreat to the James river one of them lost his photographic apparatus. They have taken pictures of the principal battlefields and officers and incidents of the war in Virginia; and these pictures, neatly mounted and disposed on screens, are now on exhibition at Brady’s. A series of cartes de visite have also been prepared from the originals for albums.

Every battle-field of the present, as of every war, has its national history. But, besides this, there is a private interest felt by different individuals in these places; for in one a brother fell; in another a lover lost an arm; and in others friends and relatives have fought bravely and come out unhurt. Of these places Brady’s cartes give a better idea than volumes of description could do.

Here, for instance, is a view of the soldiers’ graves at Bull Run - a dark, gloomy field by a brier-shaded stream, with sticks and bits of stone stuck up to mark the soldiers’ last resting place. Here is the gateway to Yorktown, a rude work of wood, flanked by a rude wall - a sort of caricature on the gates and walls of old York, in England. Here is a battery near Yorktown, with gloomy, death-dealing mortars, crouched behind a protective earthwork; here is the entrance to Cornwallis’ cave, converted into a magazine by the Confederates; here a view of one of the batteries on York river, curiously constructed of wood, clay and sand bags; here the plain outline of the Sudley Church at Bull Run, afterwards used as a hospital. Then there are views from the interior of the fortifications of Centreville, showing the Quaker guns placed there by the rebels, exactly as they were found by our troops. There are camp views showing the headquarters of our different generals, and giving a vivid idea of tent life.

Everybody is interested in the exploits of our different generals, and would like to see them personally. At Brady’s the Imperial photographs taken from life will give the best idea that can be obtained of Heintzelman, McClellan, McDowell, Keyes, Sumner, Fremont, Halleck, Pope and others, whose names are in everybody’s mouth. These generals are taken both in groups, with their staffs, and singly, and altogether their pictures make a portrait gallery the most interesting, for this period at least, that could be formed. Bradys entire exhibition proves that art and science can be kept fully up to the times, and made to possess a special interest for the hour, as well as a general value.

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