Military Prints Mold Public’s Images Of The Union

December 5, 2000

University Park, Pa.. – A recent book, "The Union Image: Popular Prints of the Civil War North," examines Civil War era prints and their role in defining the image of the Union both during and after the Civil War.

Authors Mark E. Neely Jr., who is the McCabe Greer Professor of the American Civil War Era at Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts, and frequent collaborator Harold Holzer, vice president for communications at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, studied the print business in its heyday from the 1850s through the turn of the 20th century.

The engravings and lithographs are a record of the military personalities, the campaigns, the battles, home life, the naval portion of the war, and the politics; an illuminating look at the Civil War as Northern eyes perceived it.

One of the first firms to respond pictorially to the Civil War’s beginning, Currier and Ives issued its timely, Bombardment of Fort Sumter: Charleston Harbor, to the news-hungry public. The image of Sumter’s bombardment that portrayed the battered Union flag flying amidst billowing smoke and a barrage of fire, unleashed a flag frenzy in the North and near hero status for Fort Sumter’s defender, Major Robert Anderson.

Public response to military prints was enormous and a phenomenon began. Marketed only to Northerners or Union supporters, the images were important to the Union success in the war. Neely, a Pulitzer-Prize winning writer, and Holzer say that the prints "came quickly to reflect strong beliefs and deep emotions. Civil War prints mirrored their owners’ love of country, pride in its military achievements, reverence for its heroes, and in some instances, support for the destruction of slavery."

The images recorded public attitudes and perceptions during the war. After the war, they served to polish the images of war heroes, fuel the fires of antebellum politics, and supply Union-friendly prints to the masses ready to commit the war to memory. The oversized volume of 144 original prints was gathered through years of research in public and private collections around the country.

The authors point out the frequent difficulty that artists had in getting access to the popular military leaders of the time since they were on the battlefields. To keep up with public demand, artists went to great lengths to create images of the leaders. For example, one of the widely circulated engravings of Major General Ulysses S. Grant was actually that of an Illinois beef contractor, a lookalike who was also named Grant: William Grant. They also took liberties in depicting officers and battles in array and ceremony that belied the reality of the situation. In their haste, poses were updated by burnishing out portions of an old engraving, replacing the face and altering the uniform and other details.

The final image in the book is that of printmakers Kimmel and Forster, The End of the Rebellion in the United States, 1865. An allegorical lithograph of the war with before-and-after figures of two African Americans prominent in the foreground, "the figure of Liberty, contemplating the liberating effects of the long and bloody Civil War, holds aloft the American flag while an eagle soars majestically overhead."

Published by the University of North Carolina Press, "The Union Image" is a sequel to the authors’ 1987 book, "The Confederate Image: Prints of the Lost Cause."

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Contacts:

Donna Williams (8140-863-1827

Vicki Fong (814) 865-9481 (o)/ (814) 238-1221 (h)

EDITORS: Dr. Neely can be contacted at (814) 863-0151.