Albumen photograph, Brady's Incidents of the War, Fort Richardson, Arlington, Virginia, 1861-1862
Mathew Brady published and sold a series of photographs title Brady's Incidents of the War. He included this image of soldiers and artillery at Fort Richardson. The fort, constructed in 1861, was part of a ring of Union fortifications protecting the nation's capital.
Prints and Photographs division, Library of Congress
Photographing the Civil War - 2
Mathew Brady’s Civil War photographs at the Library of Congress constitute one of the most significant historical resources of the period. Brady, a New York portrait photographer, opened a studio in Washington, D.C., in 1858. Throughout the war, Brady’s staff photographed soldiers, battlefields, and related incidents on glass-plate negatives. The images, sold as prints, reproduced in books, and converted to illustrations for newspapers, were the first to document an American war. Congress acquired the collection between 1875 and 1954 to preserve this visual history for future generations.