Civil War Drawings

Drawing showing troops on foot and horseback facing burning buildings — Alfred R. Waud, artist. *Burning of Mr. Muma's [sic] houses and barns at the fight of the 17th of Sept.* 1862. DRWG/US. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division.

The Civil War Drawing Collection, part of the DRWG/US collection, contains more than 1,900 sketches by the “Special Artists” who drew for the nation’s illustrated newspapers, as well as soldier-artists who documented day-to-day life, capturing regimental history or the landscape around them. This page provides an overview of the Civil War drawings, short descriptions of the work of seven selected artists whose work is well represented in the collections, and a checklist of additional artists.

Most of the Civil War drawings were produced by Northern artists and reflect their sympathy for the Union cause, although a few portray Confederate subjects and are among the finest surviving images we have of Southern troops and their leaders. These on-site sketches provide a compelling visual record of military life in the Union army, from the entrance of volunteer recruits into Washington in spring 1861 to the surrender of Confederate general Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Courthouse four years later. They depict battles and battlefields, camp fires and camp followers, ironclads and steamships, street scenes and landscapes, politicians and ordinary citizens, military hardware and military men. They were English, Irish, German, and American. A few of the drawings depict African Americans, as farmers, camp employees, refugees, and soldiers.

Civil War drawings are an invaluable reference tool for students of American history. Although some were derived from photographs or accounts given to the artist after the fact, the majority were eyewitness records of historic figures and events. From the battlefield, drawings were dispatched to the publisher’s office where teams of engravers copied them onto wood blocks for printing as part of weekly newspapers. Typically it took three to four weeks for the drawn image to appear in print. Photographers made thousands of images for public consumption, but shutter speeds were too slow to capture movement, and the technology did not exist at the time to reproduce photographs as newspaper illustrations. Newspaper editors depended on a network of salaried, free-lance, soldiers, officers, and amateur artists in the field to sketch the war and define its progress for their readers. In addition, soldier-artists recorded the war in the same way that diarists kept a written record, less enthusiastic about heroism in wartime, and horrified by the death and destruction which surrounded them.

Drawing showing men gathered near blacksmithing tools, men and horses in the background — A. S. Leclerc, artist. *(Scene near Tipton, on the Missouri Prairies,) Blacksmithing in the Army.* Between 1860 and 1865. DRWG/US. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division.

The drawings vary in size, shape, content, and paper color, depending on materials available at the front where artists often ran short on supplies and used whatever came to hand. Images were drawn on sketchbook pages, newspaper and broadside sheets, and miscellaneous scraps of paper. Also, some drawings are more finished than others. Under fire or on the road, artists rarely had the luxury of time to carefully delineate the details of their sketches. For example, of more than eleven hundred drawings produced by Alfred Waud, only a small percentage are finished drawings, and many provide only sketchy outlines of figures and landscape. To compensate for the lack of finish in hurried sketches, artists, like Waud, often added instruction and brief descriptions to guide engravers in their task of faithfully reproducing the scene depicted.

The nucleus of the collection was formed in 1919 when J.P. Morgan presented to the Library a group of Civil War sketches he had acquired from Harpers Brothers, publishers of Harper’s Weekly magazine in which many of the drawings had been reproduced during the war. Although the collection contains works by more than twenty-five artists, the majority were produced by three men: Alfred Waud, his brother William Waud, and Edwin Forbes. The acquisition of the Marian Carson Collection in 1996 enhanced the collection with the addition of original drawings by trained artists who were soldiers, James Queen and William McIlvaine. In 2014, the Library purchased the art of soldier Adolph Metzner from his heirs.

Selected Artists in the Collection

The work of six artists stands out, for the wealth and quality of images the Library possesses.

Forbes, Edwin (1839-1895) (search result)
Born in New York City in 1839, Forbes studied art from the age of eighteen, and worked for two years under the tutelage of Arthur F. Tait, a noted painter of animals, landscapes, and sporting scenes. At the age of twenty-two, in 1861, he went to work for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, and by the war’s end Leslie’s had published 178 wood engravings after his drawings. Like Alfred Waud (bio below), Forbes covered the Virginia campaigns of the Army of the Potomac. Unlike Waud, Forbes typically depicted battle scenes from afar, allowing the viewer to comprehend troop movements across an entire field of battle [DRWG/US - Forbes, no. 37 (B size)]. On the other hand, his close and careful studies of pickets on duty [DRWG/US - Forbes, no. 251 (A size)], soldiers in camp, and formerly enslaved people, travelling with the Union Army [DRWG/US - Forbes, no. 165 (A size)] are among the most informative sketches produced by any war artist.

Forbes subsequently devoted the whole of his professional life to the production of art based on his Civil War sketches. Although he was a prolific illustrator during the war, his fame rests largely on an epic portfolio of etchings which appeared years later. Published in the centennial year of 1876, Life Studies of the Great Army contained forty prints after Forbes’ eyewitness drawings [DRWG/US - Forbes, no. L28 (A size)]. On the strength of these prints, Forbes gained an international reputation, and his career as an illustrator of military biographies received a considerable boost. In addition, the Library possess twelve large works of art on canvas that Forbes painted after the war [DRWG/US - Forbes, no. P09 (D size)].
[Image: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.20518]
Lumley, Arthur (1837-1912) (search result)
Born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1837, Arthur Lumley immigrated to the United States with his family as a child and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He began his artistic training at the National Academy of Design in the 1850s. He began his working career as a book illustrator. Lumley became the premier special artist for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, and second only to Alfred Waud in number of published sketches. Sent to Washington, D.C., in April of 1861, he was the first “Special Artist” to follow the Army of the Potomac. Early in 1862, he joined the staff of the New York Illustrated News, which engraved 298 of his illustrations. He resigned from his wartime position before the war’s conclusion, although he continued to work as a newspaper illustrator. Many of his drawings were subjected to censorship by his publishers. Generally, these drawings depicted drunk or insubordinate Union soldiers engaged in lawless activities. A good example is his wild rendering of frenzied Union troops looting the city of Fredericksburg on the night of December 12, 1862 [DRWG/US-Lumley, no. 12 (A size)]. Images like this one rarely appeared in the self-consciously patriotic, often propagandist Northern illustrated newspapers.
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Metzner, Adolph (1834-1918) (search result)
Born in Lorrach, in Baden-Württemberg, in what is now Germany, in 1834, Metzner earned a degree in pharmacy from the University of Freiburg. He immigrated to the United States in 1856, settling in Louisville, Kentucky, where he established a pharmacy. Ultimately a captain serving in the 32nd Indiana Infantry, Adolph Metzner documented his fellow German-American soldiers from the time they entered the army in Indianapolis on August 24, 1861, until they mustered out on September 7, 1864, after serving in the Atlanta Campaign. The regiment served under the Army of the Ohio. His artistic skills were recognized, and he soon became a topographical engineer. Because his art was not intended for publication, Metzner was free to document the horrors of war because he created art for his own record much in the same way that diarists kept a written record. Historians now study the work of soldier-artists because their visual record offers balance to images created to purposively promote the war effort by Northern publications. Metzners images vary from humorous depictions of his regiment, as in [Captain Francis (Frank) Erdelmeyer and Private Jacob Lawinsky [i.e. Labinsky?] at an outpost near Corinth, Mississippi, April 1862] [DRWG/US - Metzner, no. 86 (B size)] to a horrific death scenes of Confederate fatalities, Stone River rebellion [DRWG/US - Metzner, no. 47 (A size)]. He also offers visual proof that soldiers slept in hammocks, [Captain Adolph Metzner, Lieutenant Louis von Trebra and Jacob Labinsky, Huntsville, Alabama, July 1862] [DRWG/US - Metzner, no. 35 (A size)].
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McIlvaine, William (1813-1867) (search result)
Born in Philadelphia in 1813, William McIlvaine received an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1832. He furthered his artistic studies in Europe, returning to work for his father before taking up painting full-time. Lured by the promise of gold, he ventured to California in 1849, producing a large body of watercolor work there. Upon his return to Philadelphia in 1850, he exhibited his art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and published a volume in reproduction, Sketches of Scenery and Personal Adventure in California and Mexico. In 1856, he moved to New York; and it was from there that he was lured into Army service during the Civil War. He joined the 5th New York Infantry, known as the Zouaves because they had adopted colorful, North African style uniforms. He served with them in the bloody Peninsula Campaign until 1863, earning the grade Second Lieutenant. He returned to New York, where he exhibited his watercolors at the Brooklyn Art Association in 1864. The selection of drawings came by gift and purchase from Marian Carson, and offer quiet reflection rather than battle scenes, with a focus on architecture. Some scenes offer small images of his fellow Zouaves as well as African Americans. Images that stand out include Ruins of church at Hampton, Va. [DRWG/US - McIlvaine, no. 7 (AA size)] that depict civilian vendors selling to Zouaves, View in the Chickahominy Swamp [DRWG/US - McIlvaine, no. 17 (AA size)] a peaceful moonlit scene of a picket standing guard near a fire at the edge of the swamp, and The Chickahominy - Sumners Upper Bridge [DRWG/US - McIlvaine, no. 15 (AA size)] featuring a corduroy road across the swamp.
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Waud, Alfred (1828-1891) (search result)
Almost two-thirds of the Library’s Civil War sketches were drawn by Alfred Rudolph Waud (pronounced Wode), one of the most prolific of the Civil War artists. Waud had acquired formal academic training in art and professional experience as an illustrator before the war. In addition, he was a perceptive journalist. His own accounts of the scenes depicted often accompanied wood engravings published after his sketches. More than that, his apparent courage under fire and passion for the men he depicted drew him dangerously close to the fighting. His drawings portray an intimate account of the drama and horror of this country’s most devastating conflict.

Waud worked for two illustrated newspapers during the war: first for the New York Illustrated News, and later for Harper’s Weekly. Between them the two periodicals published nearly 350 Waud drawings, more than any other artist. By contrast, Edwin Forbes published 178 drawings, and Winslow Homer 26. During the first year of the war Waud worked for the New York Illustrated News sketching political and military leaders, incidents, and events in and around the nation’s capital. These included: the funeral of Union martyr Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth; President Lincoln reviewing the new “three year” recruits; preparations for the defense of Washington; General Winfield Scott presiding in his office; and scenes from the first Battle of Bull Run.

In early 1862, Waud left the Illustrated News to join the staff of Harper’s Weekly, with whom he would be associated for the rest of the war. Harper’s assigned Waud to follow the Union Army of the Potomac, which saw action in most major campaigns fought during the war. Waud witnessed and sketched its great successes and disastrous defeats. He followed the army through the Battle of Winchester, the Peninsular Campaign, the Battle of Sharpsburg (Antietam) and South Mountain, the Fredericksburg campaign, the Battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, the Battles of the Wilderness and Cold Harbor, the Siege of Petersburg, and Sheridan’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign.

Waud saw the war as the common soldiers did, and his pencil recorded every aspect of their existence: drilling, recreation, makeshift meals, forced marches, life in camp, death in the trenches, and more. Waud reveals his compassion for his comrades in a grim, ironic cartoon depicting a group of soldiers toasting “a health to the next one that dies,” while Death in the form of a skeleton eavesdrops from the next room [DRWG/US-Waud, no. 395 (A size)].

Waud also sketched scenes of peace and tranquility such as Union pickets resting by a stream, or fraternizing with their Rebel counterparts [DRWG/US-Waud, no. 185 (A size)]. Waud sketched such characters as the rustic woman confronting Union troops with the accusation, “You men bin stealin’ my hogs!” [DRWG/US-Waud, no 670 (AA size)]

Waud’s numerous depictions of African American soldiers and civilians are to a large extent free of caricature, and reveal how Black individuals’ participation in the war effort changed public attitudes for a time. Most telling are his dignified portrait of an unidentified African American soldier [DRWG/US-Waud, no 13 (AA size)], and two vignettes championing African Americans’ participation in the Army with Negroes Leaving the Plough [DRWG/US-Waud, no. 54 (A size)] and African American Troops Mustered Out at Little Rock [DRWG/US-Waud, no. 162 (A size)].
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Waud, William (1832-1878) (search result)
Complementing the large body of work by Alfred Waud is a smaller group of about fifty drawings by his brother, William. William Waud sketched the war first for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper and later for Harper’s Weekly. Most of his drawings now in the Library of Congress collection were published in Harper’s Weekly and date from the last two years of the war. For Harper’s, William covered the Petersburg campaign; Sherman’s march through Georgia and South Carolina; and the progress of President Lincoln’s funeral train from Washington to Chicago. Notable among his sketches are several which depict military camp life and activities; a religious service delivered by Chaplain Chapman of the 16th New York Regiment [DRWG/US - Waud (W.), no. 2 (A size)]; a quiet portrait of General George Jerrison Stannard relaxing underneath a leafy canopy at his Petersburg headquarters [DRWG/US-Waud (W.), no. 6 (A size)]; and a dramatic wash drawing of army signalers sending messages by torchlight after dark [DRWG/US-Waud (W.), no. 12 (A size)].
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Checklist of Civil War Artists in the Collections

Here is a more complete list of artists (life dates when known), many of whom are represented by only one drawing. Collections with call numbers that include the word Unprocessed may require advance arrangements to view (see: Access to Unprocessed Materials").: