exploring iconic photographs. everybody wrote one essay and we will see the historic images. the program is moderated by one of the coeditors, professor gary gallagher. >> peter has given me the official go-ahead. we are going to display mercy in this panel at the end of a long day. what we are going to do is go down the table. matt joan, aaron are our panel. we are each room to talk about our photograph and i will start with matt. i am going to start with mattgallman -- matt gallman because this book was his idea. >> is it ok if i stay seated? this is a book that we did and my job right now is to tell you about the impulse for this book. and what the book really is. they are sure got back there so you have no idea. -- shrink-wrapped back there so that you have no idea. i am going to tell you something that might shock you, the idea emerges over beer. [laughter] matt: we were sitting around and talking about what might be a good idea for a book. how about so that you have no idea. this? most everything unfolds from the re. this is a book that builds from two basic observations about all of us. we who love writing about the civil war, we love photographs. we love looking at them, staring at them, inspecting them, looking at them again, finding things we did not realize were there. and the other thing is that we, meaning all of us, love telling stories. the impulse behind this was very simple. let's invited much of people that are very good at writing within the choose a photograph, and write about it. why do you like it, why do you care? and what we end up with our 27 short essays, each of which is distinctive. these are all of my friends. you can hear the voice in a way that is not necessarily a part of the academic writing. people are often very autobiographical. they are very diverse in ways that work well. that is the impulse, get people to write essays. i will tell you the other secret, the book was conceived over beer and most of the individual essays were discussed over beer and wine or spirits. the other secret is that this book is a hell of a lot better than we imagined, and i think gary would agree with that, and that the press did a phenomenal job with these images. and we will show them to you. the other thing is, these authors, our friends, all wrought the a game. i am reading the essays and i am thinking that these are good and i want to go back and rewrite mind. that is the impulse, what we have are a bunch of pictures. they are arranged not in this order but in the order they appear in the book which is not random. you are up. >> and i thought it was going to be last. i was not consulted over beer or wine. gary sent me an e-mail, just an e-mail, and when i called him up to discuss these are just really is no. not as friendly as matt makes it out to be. >> [laughter] >> i have four minutes, tops. one week and be obvious to anybody who knows me. why this picture, i remembered it is the cover of a book that was the first book i ever cured -- cared deeply about, "lincoln, a picture story of his life." it is the cover of the revised edition which came out when i was a bit older but it made a huge impact on me for one reason is that -- one reason. put your hand over the picture vertically. on one side, on the right side, you have a man that is sort of smiling. look at the left side, he is frowning. it is the most bizarre photograph. and the reason can be explained physically. lincoln had endured a lot. when he was a young man he was kicked in the head by a horse which may be the reason he had a condition called roving eye. doctors will correct me if i have the pronunciation wrong. the other thing that gripped me early, it is a close-up of a much larger photograph, really from the waist up. it is a very familiar photograph to us here in the 20th -- wasn't really in? the 21st century -- what century are we in? the 21st century. this is right before gettysburg, this is alexander, the great portrait photographer of lincoln. november 1863. why was this not in circulation when it is such a fantastic portrait of abraham lincoln? that was the riddle that gripped me until the answer which is rather obvious and the clue is in john hayes's diary. the doctor about great -- you talked about great primary sources and john hayes is one of them. "met the president, had ourselves immortalized with the president." the famous picture. who is missus aimes? she turns out to be sarah fisher ames, a sculptor is that received a -- sculptoress that received a commission. she as usual with artists that have an opportunity to portray lincoln in life just had problems keeping him the skill -- him still. but almost all resorted to the crotch of the photograph and i can show you several photographs that resulted from this exchange of mediums. sarah fisher ames goes with abraham lincoln to gardiner's gallery and gets to poses. one almost from the back and this great full frontal lincoln that is what i call it in the book. [laughter] >> one minute. >> i am almost done but now that you give me another minute i will go on. [laughter] >> it is only fair. >> the reason that it is not in circulation is that she took it she got the print, she made her mediocre marble bust of lincoln in the u.s. capitol outside of the senate majority -- excuse me, minority whip office. dick durbin of illinois. in this photograph was not released until about 1909 for the lincoln centennial -- and this photograph was not released until about 1909 for the lincoln centennial. i submit it is one of the greatest photographs of abraham lincoln. >> moving on. joan chose and as your figure. -- an obscure figure. joan waugh: i disagree with harold and agree with matt, this was a fun project conceived in wine. like so many things conceived and wine the next morning i was not feeling regretful at all. [laughter] joan waugh: i kept asking matt again and again are you sure we can have fun with this? we can write from our heart at 41 sonata footnote everything? and he said yes and i decided to trust him and i am glad that i did. this picture was one that fascinated me of grant leaving against as you can see -- leaning against as you can see a tree. it was taken on june 11 or 12th mirror the harbor. -- near the harbor. when i started my project on ulysses s. grant, i was fascinated simply because i hadn't been for many years before this project a 19 -- have been for many years before this project a 19th-century historian. i have seen many photos of stiffly posed middle-class people -- had seen many photos of stiffly posed middle-class people. i had never seen anything like this. it seemed cool, hanging out and very informal and modern about it. as i came to study grant deeply and understand where he was and what he was going through and what he was faced with when the picture was taken on june 11 or 12th, 1864, after goals armor, i marveled -- coal's harbor, i marveled that he embodied that when he must've been under tremendous criticism, under the gun, if you can imagine the fact that he had engendered such huge casualties in the overland campaign. it really fascinated me as the qualities that i had come to associate him in my scholarship as he was known to the people in the north. somebody who could be counted on to actually be resolute, to win the war to be confident about it no matter what happened, to be that person, that tower of strength that was so needed. those are the qualities that i saw in him. the qualities that i tried to convey in this essay. it just happened that at the same time i was asked to write this essay i was reading a book about famous early american ethnographer and photographer edmund curtis. a terrific biography of him by timothy egan. and curtis was somebody who had given himself the task of reporting the last remnants as he saw it over the native american population in the country. he ultimately published 20 volumes. it was a huge effort in the late 19th and mostly early 20th century, marvelous photographs. he captured difficulty in the indian tribes because they believe that a photo, a photograph steals social -- the soul. it does not reveal anything. i think sometimes modern scholars would look at that and talk about the distortions of the photograph is that but i like what this photograph told me about the man. it spoke to the truth. i came across a quote i would like to read to you in which you said he thought his documentation of the civil war "provided a great and truthful medium of history." i think that is the way i look at this. gary gallagher: i saw this picture for the first time when i was 10 or 11, i cannot be sure. it is in the heritage history of the civil war before the section on the peninsula campaign. i read this in the farm where i grew up and it struck me that i had never seen anybody like this. there were other people that i could imagine in 1960 in colorado. mosby was clean shaven. study us stevens looked very much like my fifth grade -- that he is stevens looked very much like my fifth grade teacher gladys -- thaddeus stevens looked very much like my fifth grade teacher gladys. she would not have appreciated that. [laughter] gary gallagher: but he seemed anchored in another era. he seems to be from another place and i was absolutely captivated in a book that captivated me in any other ways. the book is kind of responsible for my being a civil war historian. but this picture send me to my parents'one volume columbia encyclopedia which have a section on stewart and suggested readings. i got those books and read them, i read all of the available books on jeb stuart. the biographies that were available. i read the memoir about stewart. i just was absolutely enchanted by this. and i got a large dose of the lost cause interpretation of the war. i did not know that that is what was happening but i knew that stuart was a compelling figure. the seemed to be describing this image as they described the man. a man that even many of them said it an anachronism even in the mid-19th century. i saw that in the 20th century and they acted as if he was one in the 19th century. this photograph just had this tremendous impact on me and really got me started down this long road. very deep ruts now. we do not know exactly when it was taken or contracted but i -- hope to it but i think it was taken in the way to the first ride around mcclellan because they ran a woodcut that seems to be this photograph from the waist up and it came out in an issue in 1862 so i think it is early in the war. >> i do want to mention one of the things i like about the way that george approached it is that this is from the prepublication version and they do different backgrounds. anyway talking about this, i waited a long time to choose my picture because it is like being a host of the party, you want to make sure everybody else has their choice. people recognize this picture? you know the context? i will spare you a few minutes on antietam but i love this picture as an amateur photographer and an amateur historian of photography in that i have written about photography but without claiming to know what i am talking about. this picture brings together all sorts of things which i really like. it is a picture that is not unique but distinctive in the war literature of pictures in that it is a picture of that captures this wonderful moment. we all know after the battle of make freedom -- antietam mcclellan has in his way of thinking want a tremendous battle and save the union and in lincoln's way of thinking is disappointing.lincoln goes to see mcclellan and we know from letters that mcclellan thinks of lincoln as the gorilla and lincoln things of mcclellan as a pain in the ass. we know this from reading intertextuality. in this picture we have, it is an unusual picture in that the photographer is standing on the outside facing in to a space. two figures who we know as guys who do not like each other very much. i would claim without any proof to support it that they are among the most photographed men in the world at this. meanwhile, there is a third guy in this picture and that is alexander gardner. he is still working, he is the scotsman who did the great shots of antietam. and so i write about this moment when these three guys come together. it is really gardner, lincoln, and mcclellan. in all of these ways, i like the image is an image of a meeting -- as an image of a meeting and you step back and it is a post image. it looks -- posed. it looks like a snapshot but obviously that is not the case. everything is set up. this flag not that flag. and all of that is not apparent until you think about it and when you do you say, oh my goodness. the most fascinating moment, the idea that these guys set to pose for this picture. and i could go on and on, i won't. i will say that the first portion is called leaders and these images have all been about leaders. we're moving on to other topics now. and here is the title, the cover page picture. >> that is why i chose this one, i wanted mine in there twice. [laughter] >> like your own, i did not get as many spirits. i feel like the side of the table is owed a night out. [laughter] aaron sheenan-dean: i chose this image because i wrote about common soldiers. although it is a cheap trick the photographer uses it becomes an inviting photo because it puts us in the position of the soldiers. there are not that many portraits of everyday soldiers union or confederate. so this image is striking because we are allowed as the people reading this photograph to sit with them and observe. part of the reason why i was intrigued by this project is that i had previously helped create or created an atlas and in the process of doing that i made the maps which are not attractive at all. i hope that they are marginally useful but they are decidedly unattractive . i thought about how hard it is to start working with images. graduate training is around structuring words. the words are out there, we just reorganize them. when it comes to paragraphs and sentences and commas, we know what to do but when it comes to using images to convey stories i found myself at a real loss. how do i do that, not using words? on a map you use symbols and create symbols to represent things. this image tells a lot of complicated stories. if you are thinking as a soldier wounded, on the one hand it conveys the might of the union armies -- soldier would on the one hand it conveys the might of the union army. the scale of what the union is able to assemble. talking about the victory, this is how they are able to do it. on the other hand i wonder what the men are thinking as they are pausing in the midst of this. this afternoon i was out with a group following wisconsin and they described the experience in fighting in late 1862 from second manassas through antietam . when you survive that and you have a quiet moment you can imagine all of the awful things yet in-store. the might be thinking about all of the power or about imminent death, imminent ignominious death face down in the mud. the mystery of the photograph is that we are left wondering about the anxieties and uncertainties that the soldiers experienced everyday nearly for four years. >> i have to say that the technical quality of this image is just to me from 150 years ago. when we send us the cover we blew it up and it is amazing how good it is. and we have one of my favorite pictures. caroline janney: apparently we are going on record as to the social aspect of how we were invited. i was invited in a bar in a lexington hotel by matt. those two are owed drinks, i am good. [laughter] caroline janney: this was an image that came to mind when i was asked to the project. it is one that i have used in most of the classes that i teach, from my women's history course to the civil war course to the survey of u.s. history. i have always been drawn to this picture i think because of the many things that are going on here. when i started looking into it, two things happen. i did not realize that there was a second photograph. actually a first photograph that is not stated which was included in the book as well -- staged which was included in the book as well. i found myself doing what i did when i worked for the park service at shenandoah. when we would work on exhibits before photographs could be digitized and blown up, i would sit for hours with a magnifying glass trying to identify images. one in particular, i remember we were trying to figure out what they were having at a particular dinner. and i find myself doing that with his photograph, picking apart the bits and pieces and looking at the pictures and wondering about the objects. you can see when you put the pictures side-by-side that this was in fact as matt's picture was a very staged photograph. people are moved in and out, more objects are included. this is not a carefree shot of someone walking into the cap. -- camp. the project came at a very important time for me. i was a brand-new mother, i have a two-month-old son when i started writing this. and i was so struck by what it must of been like to be a mother in campo. having a colicky son i cannot imagine what it must of been like to be a young mother who have these three children and perhaps a family dog, who knows where the dog came from. i think will professionally and personally -- both professionally and personally the project was profound to me. i was proud of the fact that as a new mother i could write something at this moment. matthew gallman: i should say that the rule was that every author could choose one picture. but one of the duties of being in the profession is that you work for yourself on three occasions we broke the rules. -- beauties of being in the profession is that you work for yourself. and so on three occasions we broke the rules. >> i feel like the black sheep at a party. as we have gone down the line and gone through the portraits of the living, i kept realizing that it is down to bill and me. i am like everybody else, a couple of people here, childhood, i saw the photograph early and walked through the looking glass and have not really been the same sense -- . since -- since. julie, this is the flip side of the coin. mrs. always the bottom line. -- to me, this is the flip side of the coin. this is always the bottom line. this is not only one of the first images i have ever seen of the data because i am a child of the 20th century but it is also an image of something more than that which is decomposition what happens when the debt are not buried in a timely way -- dad or not buried -- dad are not buried in a timely -- dead are not buried in a timely way. as an adult it makes me hate all the more the hackneyed platitude, one picture is worth a thousand words. it depends on whose words and one picture -- what picture. yourself he is not worth a thousand words of shakespeare, i am sorry. -- your selfie is not worth a thousand words of tracer, i am sorry. [laughter] stephen cushman: but this picture, in the photographic sketchbook of the war he calls them confederates and then he takes his camera and walked around 180 degrees and calls them union. there is so much for the history and veracity of photography. >> must be you. >> must be me? william blair: ok, when the market downturn came in 2008, this is what i thought it would be able to afford for retirement. [laughter] william blair: actually i was in graduate school at the time, almost 25 years ago, with dr. gallagher and let me say for the record that eight years at penn state, no water stains. none. [laughter] william blair: no water stains. i was doing essay for the campaign series that gary was producing and i remember getting this image. this was a time before a lot of these images proliferated over the internet. the internet came alive in 1981. this is new for me even though i know the image was around earlier. the very first thing i thought of when i looked at this picture is that this picture is not civil war. i do not know if anybody else looks at it and says what i did which is world war ii. i thought this could have been any village in france during the campaign to liberate that country. and i was struck by that because it was a part of the war that i just did not know that well. i was in the midst as many scholars understand at the time, of trying to put some muscle into what we call home from studies began back in 1990. matt was one of the pioneers. he grabbed me and appealed to me and tried to figure out what war did to human beings. on further investigation it startled me. you know the bigger story. burnside muted pontoon bridges. -- engineering-- -- needed pontoon bridges. engineers were fired upon. and then what happened was disgraceful. the union army went into that town and if you can rape a tone that is what happened. they put graffiti -- how that is what happened. -- they put -- town that is what happened. they put on graffiti. this is a real message to the confederates. you cannot protect your women. so this picture has always conjured those sort of images with me. you should know that in civil war studies right now this picture is indicative of the struggle as to how to think about the war. is it a destructive war? is the carnage not worth it in some respects? is it just tragic? or is it still like my former colleague argues for a limited war that stayed constrained within standard military practices with these as being extras in the war? or do not know how that is going to alter and out but i do know -- i do not know how bad is going to all turn out but i do know that it is important to remember. robert e lee did. he was at a different part of this battle, watching the carnage visited on the union army. not his men, the union army. i do not know if this is true but i want to believe this. it is said that he said "it is well that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it. -- it pure hell -- it." >> one thing that struck matt and me is what a wonderful variety of ways people have come to the war. some of very young. we reflect that in accounts. some of us were very young harold was and steve was. others came to the war in a more mature stage. but we have all ended up in the same place and the book reflects that many different avenues to becoming a serious student of the civil war. you get both a wonderful array of images that means so much to us and a wonderful array of ways in which historians have come to do things like study images that tell us about the war. and worked in ways we did not anticipate. matthew gallman: these eight images, all of which i love, it is not as if we selected eight to sel cover ground. the diversity is very fast even though we did very, very little -- fast -- very vast in even though we did very, very little nudging people course topics. -- towards topics. >> any aftershocks? if there is a question or two we have time. >> we have time for a question or two. when we are finished we will go back according to peter & books in the back of the room. -- and signed books in the back of the room. >> i wonder if any of you have considered how much more powerful these images are because they are in black and white than if they were done in color? >> let me do a slightly different take on that. i think they are powerful because images were not as pervasive as they are now. black and white simply reflects another aspect of the limits of technology but people beheld them as wonders of technology. to see as joan says, ulysses s. grant lounging on a tree. to see antietam. they were marbles, they were shocking, they were prized --. --marvels, they were shocking, they were prized. people kept them in family albums. these images were not promiscuous. the video were rare, precious and wonderful. -- they were rare, precious, and wonderful. the black and white aspect, they did not imagine color technology . they thought they were prized possessions. >> we have all seen colorized versions of civil war photographs. we were looking at one the other night and i have mixed feelings. they are fascinating and to see george custer with a blue uniform on the ground. it also seems like turner's colorized films. "double indemnity" should not be in color. >> i will add that we took the book into my civil war class and debated whether they should be colorized. some people thought that it was more real, they could relate more. maybe there is a generational change going on but they seemed compelled by the color photographs. >> my name is mike mccormick and i am from mexico. i came a long way. just a quick question, what was the average length of the essays? >> the question is -- i am not sure if everybody can hear that -- what is the average length? 4-5 pages long. matthew gallman: essentially 10,000 words. 2500. 10 pages expert. -- typescript. >> matt was a minor in math. [laughter] >> it felt like 10,000 words sometimes. they are for-five double column pages -- 4-5 double column pages. >> when you wrote the e-mail saying you are not invited to drink but here are the instructions you said.500 words. -- 720 500 words. -- said 2500 words. [laughter] >> i do, this was a medical perspective because -- come at this with a medical perspective because of the photo of lincoln and mcclellan. this was at the same time as lincoln's visit where the officers are all lined up and there is an officer who has his hands on his belt. that is dr. johnson letterman. off in the corner is custer. the point is here you have lincoln right next to jonathan letterman who is my hero. matthew gallman: the antietam picture, gardner does a series. he follows lincoln out from d.c. there are a total with all of the guys lined up. i really book recently where the author who wrote about garner, lincoln said that clearly the outside are the best and the ones in the tender inferior which showed me this was not a good -- 10 are inferior which showed me -- tent are inferior which showed me that this was not a good book. >> yes? >> since photography was relatively new during this time, how do you taken during the war changed perspectives or had an impact on the public seeing the photos? >> that is a great question and the most obvious way that they changed perspectives, and the antietam deaf studies are the most -- death studies are the most famous examples of this, they showed what a battlefield actually look like rather than an artistic representation. many americans found them shocking. it was a cultural phenomenon. >> i used to be in journalism so i know about reproduction and newspapers. you have to understand that at this point they were not able to do black-and-white photographs in newspapers. what they were able to do is lie on. what was really -- line art. what was really an impact as they would take the photographs and make exhibitions. they made a whale of an impact. the only thing i can think of in today's growth would be do you remember the cadaver exhibits? they would put travelers on display and it riveted people. this had the same kind of visceral impact. "the new york times" said that now the war was brought home. joan waugh: just one thing, i have to remark that one of the things that impressed me the most about studying photography in the civil war is that it brought a sense of nationalism and celebrity status to the leaders of the country that simply had not been there before. before photograph of grant sherman, lee, all of the heroes -- the photograph of grant le e, all of the heroes, they kept them and put them in scrapbooks. they are in thousands of scrapbooks as if they were family members. i thought that was an interesting thing when i began my research, i noticed legal niche of research of scrapbooks of ordinary people having celebrities in their homes. and nurturing them and nourishing them and cherishing them. harold holzer: a point about lincoln's image in photography is that he manages to get himself to the gallery remarkably often, usually on sundays when he is not bothered by favor seekers or other seekers. but he is sort of recording for the people his own deterioration as if he is suffering for the nation's sins and he wants his image out there. he does not say to get photography images made for publicity but he is invited. keep in mind as joan and gary and will said that there is a commercial elements. they are sold through the mail and become political pieces in a time when presidential candidates do not campaign. they are ubiquitous and fraser at the same time. soldiers carrying 10 types of sweethearts into battle. soldiers pose for tintypes and send them back home. there is a remarkable exchange of photographs going on. and people are taking a chance by doing these photographs because they do not know what that market is, sometimes well and sometimes ruinously because he goes completely bust. >> it is not the first war to be photographed. there are photographs from the crimea and from mexico. it is the first massively photographed war. one more question. >> i will sound is slightly dissenting note. -- a slightly dissenting note. it is certainly true that from a technological note these photographs were shocking and displayed the realism in a way that americans did not access before but i am hard-pressed to imagine that after the first major exhibition in the fall of 62 when the antietam photographs are publicly unveiled in new york, shock and horror which is recorded widely, that would change the perspective. maybe we need to find a different war, maybe we need to change how we fight this. i instruct more by the way in which people assimilate the immediacy with which -- m struck more by the way in which people assimilate the immediacy in which this brings them into the war and they pursue it more vigorously. you cannot say that it changed how the course of the war happened. they changed how people think about it. but we have a remarkably adaptable way sort of adapting technology. the very first time i taught the civil war was in the spring of 2003 at the virginia military institute. on the day that i was to lecture on antietam and i had my images to talk about the media and war we were in the middle of the invasion of iraq and a caused class because cnn -- i because cnn was carrying the war live. -- i paused class because cnn was carrying the war live. this is what the students expected to see. people found a way to bring this into the frame of reference despite the novelty. >> one thing, we will get to the last question, it is important to remember that for considered themselves artists as well. they are not trying to give you some kind of extreme realism because they changed things around. they composed photographs. they are artists and what we would call documentary photographers. >> that is quite an introduction to this. i remember being told a few years ago that as soon as mcclellan gets to antietam battlefield, the selects a mansion house for his headquarters but when lincoln shows up suddenly there is this tent set up for it because that is where you expect to find a commanding general on a battlefield. so we go from what was mcclellan's actual headquarters to this photo walked in -- op tent. >> i am not sure that it would be a mansion most places but it was definitely a substantial house for that part of maryland. >> as matt points out in his essay, that is a photo op with the american flag tablecloth and lincoln's famous hat. >> and the confederate flag on the ground. >> if you look at the leaders facing each other you can see the house in the background. there is a man sitting there holding the flight number. he is pressed down, -- the plate number. he is crept down number 384. >> he had moved on from the house,-address that because i have been there. he was there to visit wounded soldiers as well. he met with wounded soldiers confederate as well as union. >> you have been resolute attendees today and we thank you for your attendance all day long. [applause] >> and i have just been told the book signing is going to happen right here. maybe down below. >> right in front. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> you are watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook at c-spanhistory. >> almost as if they were matter and antimatter. >> freedom breeds inequality. >> he is always to the right and almost always in the right. >> anything complicated confuses the crowd. >> few makers -- filmmakers robert gordon talk about their film on the debates between buckley and vidal over war politics, god, and sex. >> very unlike today. today i believe there is somebody saying the numbers are dwindling, talk about hot topic, hot, salacious topic number two. whereas then i do not think that was the norm in tv at the time and i do not think these guys needed -- as morgan said. >> howard was the moderator who was a distinguished news man who i think was embarrassed. he was moderating but he disappears for minutes at a time. now you would not have a moderator not jumping in every 30. i think everybody at abc stood back and let the fire burned. >> tonight at 8:00 eastern and pacific on c-span's "q&a." >> each week, american history tv's reel america brings you archival films that told the story of the 20th century.