PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ON THE FIELD OF GETTYSBURG AFTER THE BATTLE IN 1863
THE turning point of the Civil War is the Battle of Gettysburg. From that day the Confederate cause began to wane. Few battles of modern times show such great percentage of loss. Out of the one hundred and sixty thousand men engaged on both sides, forty-four thousand were killed or wounded. Brady's cameras reached the field of battle in time to perpetuate some of its scenes. The ghastliness of the pictures is such that it is with some hesitation that any of them are presented in these pages. It is on the horrors of war, however, that all pleas of peace are based. Only by depicting its gruesomeness can the age of arbitration be hastened. It is with this in mind that this photograph is here revealed. There is probably not another in existence that witnesses more fearful tragedy. The photograph is taken on the field of Gettysburg about nineteen hours after the last day's battle. It shows a Union soldier terribly mutilated by a shell of a Confederate gun. His arm is torn off and may be seen on the ground near his musket. The shell that killed this soldier disemboweled him in its fiendishness. This picture is as wonderful as it is horrible and should do more in the interest of peace than any possible argument. Something of the bloodshed on the battlefield of Gettysburg may be understood when it is considered that the battlefield, which covered nearly twenty-five square miles, was literally strewn with dead bodies, many of them mutilated even worse than the one in this picture. The surviving veterans of Gettysburg have seen war's most horrible aspects. Gallant and daring commanders led those brave men in that three days' inferno, from the first to the third of July, in 1863.
BOROUGH OF GETTYSBURG IN 1863—SCENE OF ONE OF WORLD'S GREATEST CONFLICTS
MEADE'S HEADQUARTERS ON CEMETERY RIDGE