Battlelines: Gettysburg, Day 1: Civil War Combat Artists and the Pictures They Drew, #2

By Jim Stovall

What did the battle of Gettysburg look like?

Despite the vast number of photographs associated with the Civil War, we have no photos of the battles themselves. The state of photography at that time could not stop action as it does today.

But we DO have pictures.

They are the drawings of the battlefield artists -- the Specials, as they were called -- sent out by publications such as Harper's Weekly to make a visual record of the pivotal event in American history. The woodcuts that Harper's and other publications produced based on these drawings are famous and well-known.

But what of the drawings themselves -- those made during the battle or in the evening when the firing has ceased?

Unfortunately, while many of them still exist, relatively few have ever been published.

This series, Battlelines, seeks to correct that. We begin with a five-volume set of those drawings related to the battle of Gettysburg. This volume (number 2 in the set) presents the drawings of the first day of the battle, Wednesday, July 1, 1863. All of the drawings were executed by Alfred Waud, one of the most prolific of all of the war's combat artists. You will find out much more about Waud in this book.

Watch for other volumes in this set.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Stovall
• Release date: Jun 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386861034

Jim Stovall

James Glen Stovall (Jim) is a retired professor of journalism who lives in East Tennessee. During his teaching career, he taught at the University of Alabama (1978-2003), Emory and Henry College (2003-2006) and the University of Tennessee (2006-2016). He is now working on a second career writing young adult fiction and mysteries. Jim is the author of the a selling writing textbook, Writing for the Mass Media, as well as other journalism texts such as Journalism: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How and Web Journalism. Other books include:  • Seeing Suffrage:The 1913 Washington Suffrage Parade, Its Pictures, and Its Effects on the American Political Landscape • Battlelines: Gettysburg: Civil War Sketch Artists and the First Draft of War In addition to writing, Jim likes to paint (watercolor), draw (pen and ink), play music (dulcimer and banjo), garden and piddle around in his woodworking shop. Jim grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and that is his favorite setting for his novels.

Book preview

Introduction – What We See

The many pictures that we have of the Civil War and those who participated show us the faces, expressions and uniforms of those caught up in America’s most vivid maelstrom. We have thousands of those pictures. People from all walks of life and in all conditions of humanity of that troubled time are well known to those who take the time to look. The most compelling images are those of the soldiers – some in brightly pressed uniforms standing before the camera. Others line up with their fellow company members in scenes in and around their camps. We even have pictures of dead soldiers, lying peacefully and sadly on the fields and behind the rocks where they fought.

What we do not have are photographs of the battles themselves – the scenes of action where these men showed their courage, where they risked their lives, where they were wounded, and where and when they died.

Still, we can know that to some extent because, while we do not have photographs, we do have pictures. These pictures – drawings by men called Special Correspondents, or Specials for short – take us inside the battles, the campaigns, the marches, the fights and the killing. The drawings were made on the scene – sometimes in the middle of a battle and often at the end of the day when the shooting had ceased. They were made by men who had all the courage of the soldier but whose armaments were pencils, pens, occasionally a few paints, and a notebook of paper.

The drawings the Specials made were not meant to be finished artwork, though some of them came remarkably close to that. Rather, there were artistic notes that would be sent to the employer’s home office, where another artist would re-draw and enhance them, making them suitable for publication in a Harper’s magazine or a Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly.

And after they had served this purpose, they were often discarded.

Yet, miraculously, many of those drawings survived. They survived by luck and by the deliberate actions of those who recognized their value. They come to us today as an extraordinary