From the New York Times, 9/26/1862, p. 5

BRADY’S PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE WAR.

The Horace Vernet of our great civil war is yet to appear, and as he is no doubt waiting upon the arrival of its Napoleon, we confess a serious anxiety for his advent. Nay, we may as well go further, and admit that we should be thankful, as things now stand, for smaller favors. We should gratefully accept a Pelissier, and commission an Yvon to record his achievements. But whenever the decisive man shall come, and with him the decisive hour, and the limner shall follow after to perpetuate for our children the “great deliverance” of the land in all its terrible beauty, the task of this latter will be greatly simplified to his cunning hand by the efforts which our leading photographic artist has made, and is making, to catch our armies “living as they rise,” and, alas! to embalm our falling heroes ere they fall. From the outset of the war Mr. BRADY has been in the field. His cameras have followed the cannon from the Potomac to the York, from the Chesapeake to the Alleghanies. Scarce has the camp of the volunteer been pitched by the more or less muddy waters of the Chickahominy ere the patriotic Polyphemus plants himself within range, flings away his green curtain, and opens his one-eyed battery upon the scene. Like the sunlight which he presses into his service and ours, this silent Asmodeus penetrates into every secret, unveils every mystery. He captures the fugitive contraband as he urges his slow oxen through the splash of the Rappahannock fords, and sends his down through all-coming time to reveal the insensibility of the negro race to the compromises of the Constitution, and to the beneficent influences of patriarchal order. Just glance at the group! Not a white face among them – no Caucasian serpent seducing these wanderers from their Eden-home. They have equipped themselves – spoiling their masters, perchance, as the Egyptians were spoiled by their fugitive slaves of old – they have confiscated sundry rebel horses and wagons in advance of the acts of Congress, and they are making their way slowly northward – Yankeeward – freedomward. What instinct leads them do you think, and is there no “lesson for young statesmen” in this rude exodus without a Moses – unless, indeed, we assume with the popular chorus that the spirit of JOHN BROWN is “marching on” before these simple Israelites in ebony!

And as we are all of us, or should consider ourselves to be the youngest possible statesmen in the presence of the new and tremendous complications of our national position, what lessons may we not find in all these scenes! Look upon this picture – or upon this! A simple Virginian farm-house, with its low walls, its high and sloping roof. Under the tall, gaunt trees, which shade its rustic doorway, (for porch it has none,) stands a table, and around the table is gathered a group of country people – the natural Arcadians of the soil. There is nothing in the scene to suggest the throes of war – nothing to arrest the fancy of the eye. Turn to the title and what do you read: “Battle-field of Cedar Mountain. House in which Gen. CHARLES WINDER was killed.” Over this common-place corner of the Old Dominion then, as over historic Yorktown, and Williamsburgh, and Richmond, the red light of battle has fallen. Never again shall the new glow depart from the scene.

Cedar Mountain is no more the Cedar Mountain that yesterday it was. How strange, how impalpable, and yet how real is this signet which history sets upon nature! The place where a great event has come to pass – the scene of a martyrdom – the birth-place of genius – the battle-fields of nations – are looked upon by us all with another than the outward eye. The veriest clown who turns the sod at Marathon or Waterloo is vaguely transfigured by the atmospheric about him, though the past be all a blank to him, and the present a mere question of more or fewer turnips.

In the case of our American battle-fields, the debt we owe to the art which seizes their main features before decay, or (more formidable still,) improvement’s “effacing fingers” have begun to sweep their lineaments, is peculiarly heavy. So frail is our domestic architecture, and so uncertain the tenure of the picturesque even in the most deserted and lonely regions of the land, that five years might well suffice to obliterate all the leading accidental characteristics of any one of the scenes which our children will care to revisit, and desire to see, in imagination at least, as their fighting fathers saw them. Let us, then, heartily acknowledge our obligations to such an “abstract and brief chronicle of the times” as this which Mr. BRADY has been so earnestly and unobtrusively making up for us.

Scarce has the smoke cleared away from a well-fought field before his light artillery is brought into play. Here he fixes for us a deserted battery of the rebels with the ruins of its exploded gun, a subject now of curiosity and not of concern to the victorious National soldiers who stand about the wreck. Here he preserves the grim tremendous outlines of one of McCLELLAN’S consummate batteries, ditched, and heaped and charged with thunder for the benefit of JOHNSTON and his Confederate thousands at Yorktown. Can you not pardon a little entrenching to the engineer who entrenches so well as this?

And here again, behold the point to which our fears and hopes have latest turned. Yes, this is Harper’s Ferry – with all its glories of river and of mountain – with that grand curve of the broad yet fretful Potomac – and those haughty steeps of the Blue Ridge that will scarce stoop to give the royal river way – but withdraw in a kind of scornful acquiescence on either side as he advances. How rapidly at a glance you take in the difficulties of the position as well as its advantages, and learn to feel a wiser sympathy with the brave soldier who has just yielded up among these mountains, his life with his post. And that soldier himself – he also is here – a strong, weather-beaten veteran – standing like a pillar of stone among the pillars of stone which surround him – grey and firm. The sentinel of the Potomac – he died upon guard. Let this be his sufficient epitaph.

Once more let us repeat it – Mr. BRADY is rendering us all a real service, in divers ways, by this work of his, undertaken so courageously, and carried forward so resolutely. It is no holiday business this taking the likeness of “grim-visaged war” – and it is no mere gratification of idle curiosity which its results may afford us. We wish the artist all possible success in his task and commend his efforts anew to the admiration and the appreciation of the American public.

Page last updated on 07/24/2009