In the attached New York Times column, an unaccredited journalist told his readers about the mournful spirit that dominated the rooms at the Matthew Brady Gallery where the very first war photography exhibit in history was first put on display. The photographer called his unique showing, “The Dead of Antietam“:
“Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us that terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards and along the streets, he has done something very like it. At the door of his gallery hangs a little placard ‘The Dead of Antietam’. Crowds of people are constantly going up the stairs; follow them…there is a terrible fascination about it that draws one near these pictures, and makes you loath to leave them. You will see hushed, reverend groups standing around these weird copies of carnage, bending down to look in the pale faces of the dead, chained by the strange spell that dwells in dead men’s eyes.”
It was on the first day at Gettysburg that the Confederates made a terrible mistake. Read about it here.
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