My second visit to the Potomac was paid after the lapse of several years, and under very different circumstances. When the Capitol echoed loudly the fierce and deadly sentiments of the men of the North against the men of the South. When both had shouted—
“Strike up the drums, and let the tongue of war
Plead for our int‘rest.”
When the deliberations of the senators were “war estimates,” arming of troops, and hurrying them to the “front” with all possible despatch. When the city of Washington presented all the appearance of a place threatened with a siege. When every unoccupied building was turned into barracks, and every piece of unoccupied land was made a “camp ground.” When the inhabitants were in terror and dismay, dreading the approach of an invading host. When hasty earth-works were thrown up in front of the city, and the heights were bristling with cannon. When the woods and peach orchards on the opposite side of the Potomac were red with the glare of the camp fires at night, and the flashing of bayonets was almost blinding in the hot sun at noon. When the vessels sailing on the river were laden with armed men, shot, shell, and “villainous saltpetre.” When the incessant roll of drums and rattle of musketry deadened almost every other sound. When sentinels guarded every road and access to the capital, and passports were required from the military authorities to enable you to move from one place to another. In short, when the whole atmosphere was filled with sounds of martial strife, and everything took the form of desolating war.
In spite of all these untoward events, I found photography actively engaged in the city, in the camp, and on the field, fulfilling a mission of mercy and consolation in the midst of carnage and tumult—fulfilling such a mission of holy work as never before fell to the lot of any art or art-science to perform. For what aspect of life is photography not called upon to witness?—what phase of this world’s weal or woe is photography not required to depict? Photography has become a handmaiden to the present generation—a ministering angel to all conditions of life, from the cradle to the grave. An aide-de-camp of the loveliest character to the great “light of the world,” humanizing and elevating the minds of all, administering consolation to the sorrowing, increasing the joy of the joyous, lessening the pangs of separation caused by distance or death, strengthening the ties of immediate fellowship, helping the world to know its benefactors, and the world’s benefactors to know the world. When grim death stalks into the gilded palaces of the great and powerful, or into the thatched cottages and miserable dwellings of the poor, photography is the assuager of the griefs of the sorrowing survivors, and the ameliorator of their miseries, by preserving to them so faithful a resemblance of the lost one. When the bride, in her youth and loveliness, is attired for the bridal, photography is the recorder of her trustful looks and April smiles, the fashion of her dress, the wreath and jewels that she wore; and, come what change in her appearance that may, the husband can look upon his bride whene‘er he likes in after years, as vividly and as distinctly as on that day, connecting the present with the past with a kind of running chord of happy recollections. Photography is now the historian of earth and animated nature, the biographer of man, the registrar of his growth from childhood to “man’s estate,” the delineator of his physical, moral, and social progress, the book of fashion, and the mirror of the times. The uses and applications of photography are almost indescribable; scarcely an art, or a science, or a trade or profession that does not enlist photography into its service. Photography does not merely pander to the gratification of earthly vanity, but is an alleviator of human misery. Photography enters our hospitals and registers faithfully the progress of disease, its growth and change from day to day, until it is cured, or ripe for the knife of the surgeon; its pictures are lessons to the professor, and a book of study for the students, charts for their guidance through the painful and tedious cases of others similarly afflicted, teaching them what to do and what to avoid, to relieve the suffering of other patients. Photography is dragged into our criminal law courts, and sits on the right hand of Justice, giving evidence of the most undeniable character, without being under oath, and free from the suspicion of perjury, convicting murderers and felons, and acquitting the innocent without prejudice; and in our courts of equity, cases are frequently decided by the truth-telling evidence of photography.
Astronomers, geographers, and electricians freely acknowledge how much they are indebted to photography in making their celestial and terrestrial observations. Engineers, civil and military, employ photography largely in their plans and studies. Art, also, has recourse to photography, and is the only one of the liberal professions that is half ashamed to admit the aid it gains from the camera. If art admits it at all, it is done grudgingly, apologetically, and thanklessly. But there it is the old, old story of family quarrels and family jealousies. Old art might be likened to an old aunt that has grown withered and wrinkled, and peevish with disappointment, who, in spite of all her long-studied rules and principles of light and shade, harmony of colour, painting, “glazing,” and “scumbling,” has failed to win the first prize—that prize which a woman’s ambition pants after from the moment she enters her teens until her dream is realized—that living model, moulded after God’s own image, which, not having won in her mature age, she becomes jealous of the growing graces, the fresh and rollicking charms, the unstudied and ingenuous truthfulness of form exhibited by her niece. Old Art the aunt, Photography the niece. Readers, draw the moral for yourselves.
I have digressed, but could not help it. Photography is so young and lovely, so bewitchingly beautiful in all her moods, so fascinating and enslaving—and she has enslaved thousands since she first sprung from the source that gives her life. But to return to my theme.
The practice of photography, like the aspects of the country and condition of the people, was changed. “Old things had passed away, and all things had become new.” The shining silver plates, buffing wheels, coating boxes, mercury pans, &c., of the old dispensation had given place to the baths, nitrate of silver solutions, and iron developers of the new. Ambrotypes, or glass positives, and photographs on paper, had taken the place of the now antiquated Daguerreotype. Mammoth photographs were the ambition of all photographers. The first full-length life-sized photograph I ever saw was in Washington, and was the work of Mr. Gardner, the manager of Mr. Brady’s gallery. But a more republican idea of photography, which, strange to say, originated in an empire not remarkable for freedom of thought, soon became the dominant power. Cartes-de-visite, the many, ruled over mammoth, the few. The price of mammoth photographs was beyond the reach of millions, but the prices of cartes-de-visite were within the grasp of all; and that, combined with their convenient size and prettiness of form, made them at once popular, and created a mania.
The carte-de-visite form of picture became the “rage” in America about the time the civil war commenced, and as the young soldiers were proud of their new uniforms, and those who had been “in action” were prouder still of their stains and scars, the photographers did a good business among them, both in the city and in the camp. I saw a little of this “camp work” and “camp life” myself, and some of the havoc of war as well. Photographers are adventurous, and frequently getting into odd kinds of “positions,” as well as their “sitters.”
It was my destiny, under the guidance of the Great Source of Light, to witness the results of the first great conflict between the opposing armies of the Federals and Confederates; to hear the thunder of their artillery, and see the clouds of smoke hovering over the battle field, without being in the battle itself. To see the rout and panic of the Northern troops, who had so recently marched proudly on to fancied victory; to witness the disgraceful and disastrous stampede of the Northern army from the field of Bull Run; to listen to the agonized groans of the “severely wounded” as they were hurried past to the temporary hospitals in Washington and Georgetown; to be an eye-witness to the demoralized condition of men who, naturally brave, were under the influence of a panic caused by the vague apprehension of a danger that did not exist; to hear the citizens exclaim, “What shall we do?” and “For God’s sake don’t tell your people at home what you have seen!” and comparing the reverse of their national arms to a “regular Waterloo defeat,” which was anything but a happy simile. To see the panic-stricken men themselves, when they discovered their error, and began to realize their shame, weeping like women at the folly they had committed. But they atoned for all this, afterwards, by deeds of glorious valour which were never surpassed, and which ended in restoring their country to peace and reunion.