1861–1865
The American Civil War
From 1861 to 1865 the United States fought a terrible civil war between the Union and the slaveholding Confederacy. Abraham Lincoln's Union won, ended slavery and kept the country together, but about 620,000 soldiers died. Photography let people see the war's reality for the first time.
Why artists painted it
Winslow Homer began as a war illustrator and made some of the most honest pictures of Civil War soldiers. Other artists painted Lincoln, the great battles and the last days of the war.
The Peacemakers · George Peter Alexander Healy, 1868
The Peacemakers
George Peter Alexander Healy · 1868
👁️ Painted at the time
Lincoln, Grant, Sherman and Admiral Porter plan the end of the war aboard a steamboat in 1865.
The Battle of Antietam
Thure de Thulstrup · 1887
👁️ Painted at the time
Union and Confederate soldiers clash at Antietam on September 17, 1862, the bloodiest single day in American history.
The Battle of Gettysburg
Thure de Thulstrup · 1887
👁️ Painted at the time
The Union army holds a long ridge while the Confederates attack across the fields at Gettysburg in July 1863, the turning point of the Civil War.
The Battle of Shiloh
Thure de Thulstrup · 1888
👁️ Painted at the time
Soldiers fight through smoke and trees at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee in April 1862, an early and very bloody battle of the Civil War.
The Battle of Gettysburg: Pickett's Charge
Peter F. Rothermel · 1870
👁️ Painted at the time
Confederate soldiers cross a wide field in Pickett's Charge, the last big attack at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, which failed.
The Battle of Hampton Roads
Kurz and Allison · 1889
👁️ Painted at the time
In March 1862 the ironclad warships Monitor and Virginia fought the first battle between armored ships, changing sea warfare forever.
Bombardment of Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor
Currier and Ives · 1861
👁️ Painted at the time
Cannon fire lights up Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861, the first shots of the American Civil War.
Sherman's March to the Sea
F. O. C. Darley · 1868
👁️ Painted at the time
General William Tecumseh Sherman's Union army marches across Georgia in 1864, destroying railroads and supplies to break the Confederacy.
The Battle of Mobile Bay
Julian O. Davidson · 1886
👁️ Painted at the time
Union ships under Admiral Farragut steam into Mobile Bay in August 1864, where he is said to have shouted 'Damn the torpedoes!' Julian Davidson made this color print in 1886.
The Battle of Franklin, November 30, 1864
Kurz and Allison · 1891
🕰️ Painted 26 years later
A Union line holds against waves of Confederate attackers at the Battle of Franklin in Tennessee in 1864, one of the last big Confederate attacks of the war.
Abraham Lincoln (Cooper Union portrait)
Mathew Benjamin Brady · 1860
👁️ Painted at the time
Mathew Brady took this photograph of Abraham Lincoln in New York on the day he made his famous Cooper Union speech in February 1860.
A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg
Timothy H. O'Sullivan · 1863
👁️ Painted at the time
Timothy O'Sullivan photographed the battlefield at Gettysburg in July 1863, showing the true cost of the war.
The Battle of Chickamauga
Kurz and Allison · 1890
👁️ Painted at the time
Confederate and Union soldiers fight in the woods at Chickamauga, Georgia, in September 1863, one of the largest and bloodiest battles of the Civil War in the West.