Myth? There is historical proof that the CSA was outgunned and outmanned by the more populous and industrial North. What nonsense.

Lincoln´s War killed 1/4 of all Southern males of military age. He was anti-Constitution and a white supremacist.

Wonderful article and photos from 150 years ago. Looking at their faces, these young men would not be out of place in 2012. There´s a familiarity there - they could be your son, brother or cousin. The last photo in the sequence conveys the horror of the slaughter on the field.

It´s also interesting that there´s a few men there with long hair. It proves that long hair on young American males has been around for many years. It´s not something that simply came with the Beatles.

The eyes express what words can not...

Pics are interesting. Too bad there wasn´t some more researched commnetary in the captions. Instead it´s all about the Liljenquists.

My son is 20 years old and is a Second Lieutenant in the US Armay. By the time he is 22 he will be a First Lieutenant-- a platoon leader most likely, in a battlefield situation he could wind up commanding a company. My dad lied his way into the Navy at 16 in WWII. No, this is not uncommon. Interesting pictures, but the artcle is seriously marred by that "myth" claptrap. And without their overwhelming superiority in manpower and materiel, the North´s "great ideas" would have availed them nothing.

The only leader of the War of Northern Agression whom I most admire is General Sherman. "Make war so terrible to those who started it that they will think twice about doing it again". Or words to that effect. Victor Davis Hanson has a great chapter about Sherman in one of his great books.

Old men start the wars. Young men do the dying.
My dad was an amateur photographer during the Korean War. We found in his effects a picture he had taken that was just captioned "replacement troop". This kid was sitting in a fox hole looking up at the camera, and the terror in his eyes is haunting. I hope he made it through the war ok.

That end photograph was probably "edited". I mean that most of the dead had been picked up before the picture was taken. There was enough revulsion at these pictures, imagine what it would have been if a picture showed 10,000 dead, lying in heaps.

Photographic history is always an amazing treasure.
Thanks for posting!

Actually, #10, they are union dead at Gettysburg, O´Sullivan plate July 5, 1863.

Considering that the battle concluded on the 3rd and the fact that many of those who died did so after the battle from infections etc. this was in all likelihood not ´edited´.

Data from Frassanito´s Gettysburg: a Journey in Time. Charles Schribner´s Sons, NY 1975

Born and reared in the South my engendered sympathies were and are with my fellow Southerners, yet reason informs me that the purposes in large measure of the South were to protect and further the hideous "institution" of slavery well beyond any rationalization for "States Rights." The sacrifices of the soldiers of the North should be celebrated and revered, as I think the text here does.

According to E.B. Long, The Civil War Day by Day, an Almanac 1861 - 1865 Doubleday & Co, Inc. 1971 (I´m old and so is my library):

For the Federals, out of a total engaged of over 85,000 men, 3,155 died, 14,529 were wounded, and 5,365 missing for a total of 23,049.

For the Confederates, whose strength was near 65,000, official losses were 2,592 killed, 12,709 wounded, and 5,150 missing for a total 20,451.

My apologies for the second post.

Lord, this whole discussion makes me feel so old - I´m nearly 71 years young. However, these kinds of pictures have been with me since before I went to school.

My oldest grandparent - my father´s father died at age 92 in 1950 when I was 8. Grandpa was born in 1858, and at age 7 his daddy took him to see Abraham Lincoln speak from the back of a train as it passed through Indiana. We believe it was just before Lincoln was assassinated when he was on his way back from Illinois.

Ironically, my father was born on Lincoln’s birthday on 2/12/1903. I don´t think my grandmother could have planned it, but by golly, she had twins that day. Guess who was the most revered historical figure in my family, and guess what political party my father belonged to?

Though that grandfather and that side of the family were older, it was my mother´s side who had the Civil War pictures of relatives like the ones pictured in the article. I saw pictures like those lots as a kid, because grandma’s family picture album was one of the few things I had to entertain myself with.

Let me explain briefly: During WWII I lived with my maternal grandmother in the next county, because my parents who were both teachers couldn´t afford a full-time babysitter. My mother taught school in a remote part of my home county and had to ration her use of gasoline in order to get to her job. As a result, I sometimes didn´t get to see my parents for a week or two at a time.

I have been an avid student of the War Between the States since I was a boy, 60 years ago. I have studied every major battle, and every person if interest, from the Presidents, their cabinets, the inventors and manufacturers of weapons, the rail roads, the telegraph, the ships, boats and various great engines, and the generals, and the many lessor soldiers. They were all Americans, fighting to the death for the most substantial foundation of our nation, freedom for the individual citizens. And, I am almost always brought to tears when I read of the dedication and resolute determination of these Americans to succeed in their endeavor to preserve their ideals of freedom- each and every one of them. And, that is mainly why I am so disillusioned by my fellow Americans today who have now voted their own freedom away so easily and are so beguiled by the charlatans who now hold our nation on the leash. I never believed I would have seen this destruction of our land and our freedom in my own lifetime. I imagine these people represented by these haunting photographs are as saddened in spirit as I am, that their ultimate sacrifices all came to nothing, fretted away by a selfish and weak minded herd of humans who prefer to be kept pets of their government rather than free and independent men and women.

You all can thank Lincoln for starting the drawn out death of the constitutional republic composed of sovereign states and singlehandedly creating the foundAtion of obama´s america

continued from above...

Getting back to the pictures and the reason why they seem so familiar to me: I basically had no toys while living with grandma. Oh I had some broken crayons and a cheap coloring book and a hand-me-down doll and a teddy bear. Thus, things around Grandma´s house became my source of "entertainment".

The photo album was a great way to distract my attention as grandma would tell me who the people were and why they dressed so funny. It would be many years later when I could fully understand what those funny-looking people in the family album must have experienced and why Grandma would always cry as she would tell their story.

The most excitement, though, at grandma´s was when a bomber squadron flew over the house. We would run out and look up at the planes. They flew so low that we could see the pilots. There was a military post just South of the farm where we lived and the bombers were going North to another post in Northern Indiana. So I had two wars I was learning about during my pre-school years.

At least I had the chickens to play with and the barn cats to try to catch.
Please pardon my prattling on about growing up, but I wouldn´t trade growing up like that for all the comfort that money could afford.

#5 I exactly right I got drafted in 1970 when I was 21 and when I went for my physical I was the oldest one there I felt like I was an old man. I have always thought wars should be fought by the aged, those who have had a chance to live life, raise a family and would be facing old age rather than having to go to war in their youth. Just a weird thought I guess. But sending 18 year olds off to war is just dreadful to me.

For clarity #12, what I meant was that the picture was taken long after the battle so had it been taken on the 3rd of July there would have been many more dead that what was shown in the photograph. Not deliberate editing, just the time lapse between the actual fight and the final clean up.

This thread is but one example of my pride in my fellow L-Dotters. I hold you all in the highest esteem.

Not to quibble #21 but, in all likelihood, there would have been very little clean up of the battle field on the 4th simply because of the weather. I quote from E.B. Long:

´From Seminary Ridge at Gettysburg, a long wagon train of wounded and supplies began to head toward the Potomac and Virginia in late afternoon (i.e., late on the 4th). Soon the Confederate infantry and artillery followed, pelted by the heavy rains that washed some evidence of the great battle from the soil of Pennsylvania. Meade with his weary Federal army did not immediately pursue, despite urging from Washington.´

Both armies, on the morning of the 4th, were of the notion that the fight was not over and, while the army corpsman (and NOT obamao´s version of corpseman) may have held truces to remove the wounded from the field, they certainly would have waited until the fight were truly over to begin to remove and inter the deceased. One can readily see ´corpsman´ going out in the rain to retrieve the wounded but not to remove the dead.

Again, apologies for the multiple posts, my intention is merely to edify. If we here at Lucianne don´t know history, how can we expect the ´kardasian/lindsey lohan/brittany spears´ following lemmings to know history?

Abe Lincoln´s real legacy:

1.1 million American casualties out of a total USpopulation of 31.4 million.

In four years somewhere between 620,000 and 700,000 Americans died in the war and another 450,000 t0 480,000 were wounded, though not mortally.

The dead in Lincoln´s war outnumber the combined dead in all of America´s other wars up to the end of the Vietnam war.

You have to look to Europe or Asia to find another leader with that kind of blood on his hands.

And some people still rank Lincoln as a great president.

Surprised - and disappointed - by a couple of the comments here. Of course, Lincoln respected, and followed the Constitution; it was the states that did not. The Constitution provides a mechanism for new states to be admitted to the Union and once admitted, a state is bound thereby, like it or not. The Constitution provides no procedure for states to leave the Union. Arguing whether that´s right or wrong is irrelevant: every state read, or should have read, the Constitution before joining and knew that once admitted, they were in the Union for good. It was the Confederate states that unconstitutionally resorted to violence to leave.

And why did they leave? Because Lincoln won the election of 1860. So that´s the position that "anti-Lincolnists" are arguing: that any state that does not like the result of a presidential election has the right - as, indeed, some actually argued (and signed petitions!) - to leave.

People upset about Obama´s re-election - or for that matter, Lincoln´s election - have the right to "leave the Union" physically, as individuals, anytime.

You have to love history. One thing leads to another online. Found letters between Washington and a relative in 1793 and 1794 because of these photos.

Thanks for posting.

Very nicely done, #17.

#16/#19 - Thanks for those memories (planes, chickens & cats). I can relate.

I soooo agree, #22!