The Castillo de San Marcos site is the oldest masonry fort in the United States. It is located in the city of St. Augustine, Florida. This is one of the most amazing places in the United States for our history, beauty, and of course, photography.
Photographing and filming The American Civil War history has been a passion and favorite photographic subject. It takes us on travel throughout the United States to beautiful places and National Parks that have restored and maintained these historical sacred grounds. Autumn is the most popular time to visit and photograph them in their splendor and natural beauty. The image below is the North side of Burnside’s Bridge. See our earlier Antietam post for another view of the bridge and our early work in film here.
The National Archives and Antietam National Battlefield Park offer a host of original images, sketches and paintings of this battle and its aftermath. We featured some of those images in our earlier post above and a slideshow here of Burnside’s Bridge as it was in September 1862.
“Historic Photographs by Alexander Gardner
Alexander Gardner took 70 photographs of the battlefield starting just two days after the battle. This was the first time an American battlefield had ever been photographed before the dead had been buried. Gardner returned in early October when President Lincoln visited General George McClellan and the Army of the Potomac and took another series of images. Gardner, 41 years old at the time of the battle, was employed by Mathew Brady who owned of a photography gallery in Washington, D.C. during the Civil War.”
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Slideshow Image Credit:
Historical Photographs of Alexander Gardner, Antietam National Battlefield Park and National Archives.
HDR Image: Copyright, JayJacy Photography ©2013 All Rights Reserved
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The “Cornfield” and “cornfields” are compelling sites from one of the bloodiest battles of the American Civil War. How calm they look today than in 1862 when the battle raged and the glint of Confederate bayonets were concealed in the Cornfield revealing their location as Union soldiers approached.
“I ordered the regiment to charge into the cornfield. They started in a gallant style cheering as they moved and penetrated the cornfield, but because of overpowering numbers of concealed enemy we were compelled to fall back.” 1/
“The battlefield was too terrible to behold without a shock. I never want to see another such. I counted eighty Rebels in one row along the fence in front of us, lying so thick you could step from one to the other, and this was only in one place. In others they lay in heaps, mowed down, and many of our brave boys with them. So it was everywhere.” Edward S. Bragg of the 6th Wisconsin, and wounded at Antietam describes the scene where the Texas Brigade fought.”2/
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1/ Joel Wanner of the 128 PA describes their attack into the cornfield –
From For Honor, Flag, and Family Civil War Major General Samuel W. Crawford, 1827-1892 by Richard Wagner. Shippensburg: White Mane Books, 2005.
2/From “First Texas in the Cornfield.” by George E. Otott. The Maryland Campaign of 1862 Civil War Regiments: A Journal of the American Civil War. Vol 5, No 3. Campbell CA: Savas Publishing Company, 1998.
HDR Chic 