1864 period where the troops decided let's be friends for christmas eve? >> it's all through the siege of petersburg. these armies, of course are of the same nationality for the most part. they're of the same language. they're of the same religion. there's no barrier between the union and confederate army other than some of them live up north and some of them live down south. so instantly because there's no language barrier for the most part, the trenches are set but then in front of the trenches are even closer soldiers to one another, the eyes and ears of the army in rifle pits and no man's land are no further from me to the back of the building here. with that, you have almost instantly an open dialogue and conversation. the most written about influence that has had on warfare is fort

stedman in 1865 where a general wants to launch an assault by having one of the pickets fire a warning shot. in doing so the century pauses and yells out before firing the shot, hey, yank we're just out gathering some corn and then fires a shot because he wants to clear his conscious because they have inthis informal truce that no one will fire on either side. there are newspaper boys from richmond who go through the lines to sell papers. there are sketches in newspapers that even record it. it's not undmoncommon during the civil war in petersburg.

>> it is interesting that the initial act was translated into english in 1859. >> one last question here. i'm from michigan. i have a question about the desertion rate during the siege. could you estimate the percentage? >> you know, i can't. i have no facts or figures as to a percentage of. however, it becomes such a concern for both armies that the confederates will do just about everything in their power because of the amount of desertion desertion, especially after sherman crosses over and gives savannah to president lincoln as a christmas gift in 1864 and then starts heading up through the carolinas. now all of a sudden all of these men from north carolina, south dakota, and gaeorgia are getting

letters about how bad it is. it is very hard for these young men in these trenches that are enduring these horrid conditions to steadfast there rather than going back to take care of their families. it is compounded by the union army actually using propaganda to promote men to

that being said, while the army does get smaller and smaller constantly, it is not a vast number because lee begins this campaign with 60000 men and then of course will surrender almost 30000 at the appomattox courthouse. the french leave, which is desertion of going through a common area to return to the army eventually. all of that factors in but i don't have an exact percentage. my bad. i appreciate it. thank you all very much for being here for the leadoff. [ applause ] >> thanks. great questions. you've been watching american history tv in primetime. wednesday night, more from the seminar on the closing of the civil war in 1865. coming up at 8:00 p.m. the

battles of sailor's creek followed by the battles of appomattox. join american history tv later this week for live coverage of the ceremonies marking the anniversary of surrender of appomattox. we'll be live from appomattox national courthouse park in virginia april 9th and 12th. reflect on the battles. we'll bring you reenactments from some of the key moments from 150 years ago and we'll open the phone lines to take your questions. here on c-span 3.

each night this week at 9:00 p.m. eastern conversations with a few new members of congress. >> when you raised your hand and took the oath of office, what were your mom and dad thinking? >> i knew my mom would be crying and my dad was proud. my dad is 82 years old and he showed up to the capital. he usually walks with a cane and he showed up and he didn't have his cane. and i said dad do i need to send someone to your hotel to get your cane? he said, i'm in the capital. i don't need a cane today. he walked without his cane for the entire day, and so i know they were super proud. >> five newest members of congress talk about their careers and personal lives and share insight about how things work on capitol hill. join us for all their conversations each night at 9:00 eastern on c-span.

american history tv recently visited longwood university in farmville, virginia, for a seminar on the closing of the civil war in 1865. the prom was cohosted by the university and appomattox courthouse national historic park. up next, michael gorman who talks about richmond in 1865 and what historians can learn from period photographs. his talk is just under an hour. >> all right. thank you, patrick. our next speaker is michael gorman. michael was here four or five years ago, did a great presentation with some amazing photographs. you'll see some more of those here today. michael grew up in richmond attended vcu and vmi. has been a permanent ranger and historian at richmond national

battle park since 2003. if you have not seen his website, you really need to go and look at that website. i tell my students there's so much junk online and garbage online in terms of scholarly sources. this is about one of the best websites related to the civil war i've ever seen. i did an article on civil war hospitals in richmond a number of years ago and got a lot of good stuff from mike's website, so go see that. mike served aztecs technical adviser for the movie "free state of jones, jones," which is going to be coming out next year with matthew mcconaughey. he has recently in addition to the article in "sentinel magazine," their new issue is

completely an article by michael on lincoln's visit to richmond after the civil war. i skimmed through it yesterday. i want to read through it more closely. mike's talk this evening is on photo forensics so please welcome him. >> thanks a lot. all right. i am micced up here. can everybody hear me okay? i hate podiums. i would like to collect all the podiums around the world and pitch them over a cliff. was anybody that's here today -- were you here for the last time i spoke in 2010 or something like that? okay. wow, we have some newbies and some veterans. this is great. i was sort of thinking about what did i talk about, what did

i show you in 2010, and i don't remember, so this is a completely new sort of taking what i love to do, which is picking apart these photographs, and finding the stories within them, sort of the best of. there are over 500 images i could show you. i'm showing you about 60 tonight. if you want more, we'll hang out sometime and do that. so, photo forensics, you might also call this -- or as i often do -- a love letter to the library of congress and the reason is because back in, oh, 2003 or so the library of congress digitized all of their original negatives from the civil war and put them up online for you and me and everyone else to see with stupid resolution. that this has revolutionized what we do as historians. how did you first approach the

civil war? probably just like me. the golden book, remember that? the golden book of the civil war and all those photos and maps. i must have spent hours looking at those and every single one of them would have this view of ruins of richmond. where? it's a big town. what are we looking at? and so i asas i got older it was easy to morph that childish curiosity into an historyian's ianhistorian's position, but you might call this professional geekery. to kick this off, i'd like to really show you this monument to my lack of a life, which is this map that i've made that shows all the shooting locations for the two big firmed that visited richmond, matthew, brady, and

alexander gardner. remember all the photographers on the east coast were flocking to richmond when it fell. the shot of the century the greatest photograph there never was, because every photograph in the east had made their way to richmond and was there when lee surrendered to grant, so sorry appomattox folks. we win. how did you make these things? gosh, it's bright in here. can we bring down the lights a little bit? how do we make these images? there we go. back then almost all photographs that were made during the civil

war were made in 3d. the process -- you have all seen them. they're called stereo views. they're on cards. they're about this big. do you remember those? your geeks do. first you have to expose the plate, obviously, and when you do you start developing a scene and that's what it looks like. that's what the actual negative is going to look like. you have two images -- well just slight variances. just like your left eye versus your right eye. same time thing. you can see there's a little bit more over here. a little bit more over here. these are slightly different images. they're going to take that, develop that print it and mount it on the stereo card, which is how it would be sold. it is an important thing to know that this width right here is about three inches. your three fingers.

it's about that big. that's how you would have seen them in 1865. small, tiny. almost ridiculously small. not a lot of detail on there but you would see it in 3d which is really really cool. tonight we're going to do it a bit differently. we're going the use these as documents themselves. we're going to jump inside and play this way. by blowing them up and seeing what the photographers saw at the time. this is as close as we'll ever get to a time machine. yes, this is a staged photograph. you don't believe me? look at these guys. you think they were hanging around just like that. these kids just stopped where they were. look at these soldiers. look at this. oh, geez. there's something going on over there that's very important. a lot of them are doing their napoleon. this is what they wanted you to see. the things that i love -- and

we're going to play with this over and over and over again tonight -- are the things that don't go well like this. it is this kid with a dog. the kid is desperately trying to keep him still, but he won't. the dog is blurry. you have these guys looking back at us from castle thunder prison in 1865. they have captured richard edd richard edd richmond. this is that window in time. why don't we start where i often work. this is the main visitors' center for the richmond national battlefield park. this is where you can probably find me.

this is the most reproduced view of the iron works. it kind of annoys me, but it is worth talking about and the reason is because you see an awful lot that's important. jefferson davis getting that famous telegram in st. paul's church and having to get everybody out. it got out of control. when i refer to the evacuation fire, that's what i'm talking about. the fire that occurred in the early morning hours of april 3rd, 1865. when it raced through town -- you can see some of the ruins over here, but the iron works remained intact. over here on the left of the image -- go back, go back. come on. okay. just imagine that that incredible shot right there --

this is the laboratory building -- the laboratory island. it had all these wooden structures on it. that's where they're making everything explosive. powder, percussion caps. everything was coming off of there and it completely escaped evacuation fire. in 1863, it did blow up. a little girl caused an explosion that killed almost 69 of her colleagues. but the day it should have exploded it didn't. what's cool about this especially from today's standpoint, is you have got all the important sites that you can see like the gun foundry which is now the american civil war museum. and over here with the unfinished roof, well, that's where i work. it's always neat to see places you are intimately familiar with

in an 1865 photograph. that photograph is now chock full of exhibits and displays helping you understand richmond's history during the civil war. i prefer this one which is up on the richmond and petersburg embankment. this thing here is a burned out gate onto a bridge that is burned out as well. you're overlooking the ruins of the federal arsenal or armory. this is essentially the war making heart of the confederacy. without what you're looking at in this image, there's no war. it's just that simple. now you're overlooking these ruins after the fire but of course i like blowing things up. that sounded wrong didn't it? you know what i meant. so here we can actually see the laboratory buildings on brown's

island completely intact chock full of powder. i wonder if that's their privy overhanging the canal there. we'll never know but you get a sense of orderliness. these negatives, they're about this big. and the lens is about this big, so they're getting this deep focus without necessarily intending to. that little box, when you blow it up you can see about a mile away james monroe's tomb in hollywood cemetery. see it? i mean you cannot do this today. you can get your cell phone camera out. you're not going to get anywhere close to that level of detail. that's what enables us to reach inside these images, look deeper, and find the story. all right. nearby the photographers would

have crossed the river. took this amazingly artistic shot, which i absolutely love. it is just brilliant. you know what i'm going to zoom in on. look at this right here. look at these people. think about the week that they've had. of course, these are african-americans. they are probably former slaves on these rocks. again, do you think they were sitting there and having a picnic when the photograph rolled up? begin this is completely put together. they are trying to show you something, but it is their art. they made this happen. they constructed this shot and they don't see any problem be that, so we've got to take them on their teamrms. what's here in the background? you have the ruined bridge.

you have the tredegar iron works. he's definitely got a message here. what do you think it is? reminding you this is the current issue. in many ways art also very political art. prop propaganda you might say. does that surprise you? i'm okay with it. what we might consider neutral journalism didn't exist back then. moving on nearby to bell isle. i'm sure some of you in their studies and readings have encountered bell isle before. it is the main prison camp for union enlisted men. that and salisbury were the two big confederate prisons. i can't resist putting this in my show even though it is not

1865. it's 1863. the photographer climbed up this hill and got theis amazing view of the bell isle prison camp. look off in the background. this is the downtown. this is downtown richmond. it's going to burn in 1865 and it's just that hazy bit in the background. why? because his negatives don't survive. they're not in the national archives. they're not in the library of congress. there's the gigantic two buildings. it is acting as the confederate capital when this image is made. you can see brown's island and the laboratory from here.

in 1865, another photographer got up there and -- i'm sure he didn't know he was mimicking the shot, but took almost the exact same view. this is two years later. you can see the gun overlooking the camp now empty. there's all the downtown that we just described. over here -- over right there, that's all that's left of those mammoth flour mills. over there there's the intact laboratory that we saw. where did that bridge go? it's just gone. photographers found bell isle particularly attractive because what greater message could you send than taking this image? to climb this hill, to get this view of that, the symbolic

confederate capital overlooking bell isle. oh this is propaganda at its height with the cannon there. you know what they're going to say. you're going to say we didn't know about the terrors and the starvation that was going on at bell isle. the message in this photograph is you knew. that is the message. and you'll see it done again. you think he just happened to plop down his camera where the capital was between two trees? do you think that was an accident in do you think he happened to come upon somebody weeping over a grave there in the cemetery? of course not. this is the bell isle cemetery. again, there's the capital presiding over the city. this is hitting you hard, isn't it? it's grabbing that heart and twisting it but of course i'll

appreciate that message and i understand the art but what intrigues me is you might be able to see is we have some legible tombstones and you can read them. these are actual men who died. they are now removed to the richmond national cemetery. that's what these indicate right down there. i love that hoffman and wolf are still next to each other. they kept them in the same order they were originally buried. always intrigues me, but this one makes me angry. the reason it makes me angry is there is not one, not one, photograph of the forts that surrounded richmond during the war. this cameraman went up a hill

about 100 feet up a hill, and stood with his back to one of those forts. turn around. drives me crazy. he took this relatively mundane shot overlooking bell isle from the south side. that's it right over there. if you don't believe me, there's the gun we were just behind. see it up there? but determined to make lemonade out of lemons, i see there's a nice skyline in here. as we walk through this you'll see -- here's tredegar and right there is my visitors' center. in fact, my desk is right in there. scrolling through, you've got the foundry building. right next store you can see the big smokestack there. the armory mill which made a lot of the plates.

move up the hill, you have the second presbyterian church. but my favorite building of all time is in this shot pratt's castle. i love insane architecture. this guy made his bones as a photographer before the civil war and built this actual castle up there on a very -- mad architecture. secret rooms and all kinds of stuff. let's just go talk about pratt's castle. look at this guy. don't you want one? i do. can you imagine this in the wintertime? talk about ostentatious.

apparently, he designed it himself, so we can't blame anybody else for that. photographers knew of this guy and almost every one of them came here to shoot, not just because it was a prominent hill, but because they knew who he was. at this time, pratt was gone but at least one photographer saw the possibilities of the turret. alexander gardner got up in that turret on april 6th. think about what's going on while this is being made. april 6th sailor's creek, and made a five plate panorama. thanks to the magic of powerpoint, i'm going to run this as if you were standing in the turret of pratt's castle casting your eyes from left to right in 1865. if this doesn't do it for your folks, i can't really help you.

there we've got the capital. i love that you can see the spot's wood hotel. look at everything else. just gone. here's the big canal basin. we're going to see a lot of that later. there's what's left of the mills. we're coming up on the petersburg embankment. up here on the right, this is the armory. i think it's seen better days don't you? and then there's the laboratory, again, on brown's island. if he had taken one more stinking plate over there to the right would be the tredegar iron works. what had to happen, this camera is up there on that turret. he's going to have to expose the plate. you're talking like all day to make this and its accompanying

stereo partners. truly a feet of photography. we talked about the canal basin, which was the basin for the james river and okinawa canal. it is this big honking lake right in the middle of downtown richmond, right amongst the ruins. you can see why you would want to take a shot from there. i mean wow. this is the shot that they were looking for. for the photographers who took this, this is money, right? why? what is it that makes this shot the money shot? oh yeah right there. it's almost impossible during the civil war to photograph motion and the reason is because the exposure time of these photographs could be as long as ten seconds. anything that's moving is going to blur.

for the wind to be so consistent to get that the photographer had to be like come on, come on and he got the shot. you're strolling around looking at the other national archives images. you notice something down here in the corner. somebody has seen my show before because what this is is nasty dead horse, floating around in the canal basin. i'm not just pointing this out to be gross. this nasty dead horse told me something. the theme of this talk is photo forensics. i'll show you what i mean. take a look at nasty dead horse here and watch. he was over there and now he's here. what have we got here? two different images. what the photographer is doing

is what you would do if you're trying to get that shot? did we get it? everybody smile. doing it fast, fast, fast. maybe a half a minute between these shots. in that same time the wind that is pushing that flag out is also pushing nasty dead horse across the canal basin. you see this and you think to yourself i have two shots in the same place. there we go. motion from the civil war. nothing to it, folks. >> it is like it is still alive. >> if it is still alive, somebody put it out of its misery. we can jump in and see some nasty detail to this dead horse.

you can see this doror opening forever. over here you have this horse eating forever, right on this endless loop? just look at the wind blowing through the trees, all the little bits of life. just the difference of 30 seconds between these shots and you get that life suddenly coming right back at you through the window in time. this aren't people who are putting on their napoleons. these people don't know they're being photographed and they certainly don't know some geek is going to come along 150 years later and make a movie out of them. that won't be the last time we play that way, by the way. capital square come on. what could be more symbolic than this right? could they necessarily capture the flag in every shot? no way, but come on. this is the tangible symbol that the war is coming to a close and

everybody needs that shot of the capital. now what i find particularly entertaining is somebody you have heard about is in this image. matthew brady. brady by this time, we think he was actually suffering with degenerative sight problem so he wasn't able to do work behind the camera anymore, but that's okay. he's such a celebrity by this time that his name was synonymous with photography. i'm going to have my brady made. that's how popular and well known he was before the war. he's capitalizing on that and puts himself in the image. if you don't believe me there he is. it's like the where's waldo of the civil war. he just loves to put himself in

the image. he has this ridiculous tall hat and that pointy beard and the long black coat. we will see him again, but capital square was just and is a photographic mecca. you can just roll around there and ten feet from each other different shooting locations. and of course you have to take a picture of the governor's mansion looking down that avenue of trees. they're just starting to come into bloom. this one was a bit of a trick. look there he is. this one there's so much to like. here we have gardner's crew shooting towards old city hall, and you see a crowd of union soldiers there resting in the shade of the trees. now, i'll blow this up a little bit so you can see it. here they all are. the arms stacked.

they're hanging out, chilling out there. what is going on here? two pantless lessless yankees running around capital square? maybe it's good they're not in the image, but i bet some of you are going what is going on there and me too. what drives me crazy is the focus is just out enough so when you blow it up you don't get much better but there are only so many letter combinations that can make that happen, so i sat down with an adult beverage and said, i'm going to figure this out. it translates to keep off the grass. do not sleep. the ground's keeper must have been a bad day but there they are just hanging out in capital square almost -- in fact we

think this is taken two days before lincoln's assassination. a lot is going to change. they don't know that yet. same situation, same day. the washington monument on capital square. anybody know why this is important to confederate symbolism? it's the confederate seal. that's it. it is a guy on a horse and he's pointing. no it's not. it's a statue of george washington pointing. so here you have union and confederate soldiers milling about on capital square, some of whom are probably back from appomattox, but it's just calm. they've taken their parole. no problem. what i love about this and so much so i really can't get over this, you can actually watch -- he moved the camera about five

feet. you can see the crafting of an image but looking at this one, which was made shortly after. watch the artist's hand. go. which one is better? he was really working for this. would you stand up, sir? we need a strong central vertical. would you get over here on one knee? thank you. on your arm just like that. constructing a scene just like a painter would. exactly like a painter would and that's kind of interesting to me because as i look at this it really did resemble a painting to me. it seems very familiar. okay. how about this? am i going to sit here and tell you that serrat was a photo geek

and said, that's what i want in my painting? no. side by side are the same principles that motivate a painter to construct his image the way he does. it is exactly the same as what photographers were doing with civil war photography. look at it. it's kind of eerie. the creepiest one, look at this guy on his arm. same principles folks. it's art. not a document. what's next? libby prison the most photographed building in richmond without a doubt and the problem i have with all the photographs of libby prison is there are 100 or more shots and most of them are of this corner. i could go on.

i find that corner annoying but it is important to understand this is carrie street and this is 20th and it is completely overdone, so let's go around and see some of the more interesting bits that don't show that corner, and this one in particular that was brought to you at extreme personal expense. the negative does not survive, even though it should. it should be in the library of congress. some fool probably dropped it somewhere along the line. the only way you're going to get one is if you go and buy an original, which i did. you have libby prison from the south side looking at it as if you were northwest of the city. let me blow it up so you can see what it looks like. i just talked about how this is art. well in this case i'm about to shoot down my argument entirely. in this case it is documenting something. this is showing all the important sites of the libby prison escape. it is the largest prison break

ever. 109 men escaped through a tunnel that was under this building. every one of them escaped out that door. there's no other reason for that door to be in the shot. at the same time, he's giving us the important details of the escape. he also struck gold. if this negative has survived this would be reproduced all over the place and we'd know it better. sadly only geeks like me and now geeks like you get to see it. there's what i'm talking about. here's the prison. there's the tunnel, and there's the door all in the same image. all right. my favorite view by far i'm going to confess it is of the notorious corner but here we have -- well, if anybody wants to tell you how sweet smelling

and lovely it must have been in the past, remember these? try to keep that perspective in mind. look at this crowd of people, including a squad -- a large group of union soldiers outside of libby prison. you can see in and there's a guy resting in the window there and these kids sitting right there. it is just this wonderful shot that just shows real life happening right there at libby prison. if you're like me you're strolling along and you see the rest of the images and you see it change. uh-oh uh-oh, i feel a movie coming on. here is the kid sitting and then he's going to stand. i'm obsessed with these kids, by the way. look at this. i've never looked that cool in a photograph ever. these kids were so cool. i sort of made it my mascot.

if you go to my website, it's one of the changing pictures. this kid over here on the left, you look at this long enough and you start to wonder about what their lives were like and who are they and then you get goofy and think who do they look like. the kid on the left i think he's a lollipop guild candidate for sure, but this one blew my mind because it is marlon brando. it's the same pose. look. he's got his hand cocked in there. he's too cool for school. it's the same thing so you know everybody is like brandon is the rebel without a cause there the wild one in the 1950s. got you beat there by 150 years, buddy. those kids, i wish i knew who they were. all their young life has been war. now here they are looking too cool for school outside of libby. st. john's church who knows why

st. john's church is historically important? somebody said something there. what did you say? give me liberty or give me death. or whatever he actually said we'll never know. a lot of photographers were taking this to show to the people of the north for the first time this is it. brady couldn't resist and put himself in the image. but this is my favorite grouping of shots because here you see st. john's church. mission accomplished. we got the church in there but we also have these kids. let's put them all up against the wall so they'll stand still. there's a lot of clues in here to show you why this is a cool shot. it's brady's crew there. you can see the hood there and probably the photographer's assistant. what am i really interested in? look at these kids. check these guys out.

who doesn't know a kid just like that? all his bodies are back up against the wall and he's about three feet out in front with a big grin right on his face. and the reason they're up against the wall folks is because they were trying to keep the kids still so they could be photographed. did it work? almost every one of them is blurry. this guy is a horror show. he's got two faces. look every single one of them is moving. they're doing what kids do. everybody is like the kids these days. the kids those days look. they couldn't be still for five seconds. there's my children of st. john's church. but wait, there's more. oh yeah. i got you a movie, folks. just saying. you want to see the kids up close? of course you do. there you go. look at this.

i find this very interesting. he just suddenly appears and disappears. why? i don't know. so there they go. look at this. now they put them all in there like they're in a criminal lineup. there's the grinning kid. he's been disciplined now. he's back there. yeah. all right. this is the image that launched 1,000 ships, at least as far as i'm concerned. what's so need about this is this has been reproduced 100 times. the caption of it in the library of congress is hollywood cemetery. anybody been to hollywood cemetery? does this look like hollywood cemetery to you? no, me neither. i don't know about this, but i noticed that over here on the right you'll see that you can actually read the headboard and it says, george w. doss is11th

regiment regiment. he's not there. he's in the cemetery so just on a whim i cracked the oakwood cemetery roster and there he is. so this was the first time i was able to say, no, these captions aren't necessarily correct. we have to go back and look at these and find the real story so we know what this is. it is important to know. it helps everyone. now you can go out and visit private doss' grave and stand right there with his photograph and match it up today. that was the first one i did and the rest is history. all right. strolling around downtown rich richmond richmond, we'll try to bring this ship in. i'm going to put it out there. nobody has ever seen this folks, because i had never seen

it until last week. this image was on the library of congress site for years and years and i couldn't place it in any of the major catalogs. i got location. there's the spots wood hotel. then last week -- you'll notice fires are still burning so this is really soon thereafter the evacuation fire. two weeks ago my friend bob zel zeller sent me an e-mail and there was an image attached called hathaway. this is a panorama so here's the original image. there's the other one. you have for the first time ever

hathaway's panorama of just west of the richmond and petersburg railroad. i don't know why he took this, but it's cool and you're the first to see it. so if you didn't enjoy that, good night folks. but this is what i live for. finding these things, putting them together putting them back in context not just geographically, but timewise. it proves to me that hathaway was probably the first photographer into rich mopdmond to start taking pictures. abe abraham lincoln was probably in town when he was taking this photograph. can you imagine abraham lincoln on the steps of the capital? wow, but didn't happen.

downtown richmond. this looks like berlin after the b-57s went by. it gives everybody the impression that all of richmond burned down. wrong, wrong, wrong. don't believe that. but if you're a photographer are you going to want to take pictures of this or all the pretty untouched houses? i know i'm what i'm going to pick, right? we do it today. we have tanks rolling into baghdad. we don't want to see the order and peacefulness. no. this is visual. this is what you want and, boy was it. you'll see this particular ruin right here. got a building, two windows, two windows, and then this door like thing sticking out here. and you have seen that before countless times. there's that wall right there. what's so neat about this particular image is i was able to find the particular caption

view of ruins from main street looking down 14th street april 8th 1865. lee's army still on the field. lincoln still very much alive. all of this that we think about is that big week that's yet to occur. how many of you have seen this captioned women mourning the death of the confederacy? there's still out there. the confederacy is not dead. they're just wearing dark dresses. they could be in mourning but it just shows you far we go to make ourselves the story. knowing the caption you get the actual one. nearby was the ruins of the exchange bank and the exchange bank was one of the several that burned during the evacuation fire and it's a pretty boring shot until you dig in and you look here and you will actually see civil war soldiers graffiti

on the walls. there's even a cartoon over here of two guys boxing and one of them is described as us grant. this is nothing new, folks. we do it today. it's the same stuff. might as well. direct connection to the past. gardner's folks, remember gardner was very politically active and very politically motivated and very much an abolition abolitionist abolitionist. so when he constructed this, you know when he was trying to make a statement. they may not have shoes like you, but they want the same things. could you even imagine a more

pay tree-- patriarchal scene than this? he's always trying to needle in a political point and in this case it's right between

by jeff davis in the doorway is the table upon which the surrender of general lee that's now the photographic pride. one of the other things that i enjoy is look at the girl. look at daddy's knee and mother's chair. she is locked in. she is not going to move. she's not going anywhere. something else that kind of intrigues me. look at the preoccupation. i don't understand this gesture.

i really got nothing here for you folks. look how they solve the problem of keeping the little girl still in this one. put your head on daddy's shoulder. so charming. here he is with his staff. the staff looks off in all different directions. then you'll find a slightly different shot. oh, yeah, we got a movie coming on. this fascinates me on a number of levels. look at this guy's pants. untucked tucked, untucked, tuck tucked. why? what was so important about his pants being tucked or untucked? i've got nothing. put your hands in your pockets.

why? you get that sense, again, the construction ochf art. this is the only chance we get to see inside what the artist photographer was thinking. let's wrap it up at the lee house, which is got some really great stuff.arrived in richmond, kind of bad timing. bad day to be showing up in richmond whountouldn't you think? the news of lincoln's death is crossing the globe. i cannot prove they are directly connected but the news is embargo a full day so the news did not get until april 16th. i believe the reason was they wanted to make sure lee got into the city without incident. one can readily imagine the scenario where he was met by rather hostile crowd. mercifully that didn't happen. all the photographer could do

once he arrived, he was not seeing anybody. he was in there tighter than a tick. first news he gets. this is the end of his military career. he takes off his uniform. he hugs his wife. then somebody comes and tells him the president is dead. can you imagine? he knows that everybody's going to want to see him and the photographer did too. he's not seeing anybody until matthew brady shows up and convinces him one last time to put on that uniform and show the world. if matthew brady is photographing you behind your franklin street home, it's over. this is the general working with with constructed him. it's going to go around the world. he'd sit there with his son and staff officers and what is interesting about this, well, it's funny.