Bivouac of the Dead

This year I’ve been working on a series of portraits of generals and other personalities from the American Civil War. Going through Matthew Brady’s portraits from the Library of Congress, I noticed the tremendous weight in the eyes of these men. Regardless of their ethics, purpose, or success, many of them shared a sort of stunned expression, as if they were still seeing the carnage of Chickamauga, or Antietam. As one noted historian aptly put it, the South after the Civil War “resembled a giant hospital ward, a land of missing arms and legs. In 1866, one-fifth of [Mississippi's] state budget went for the purchase of artificial limbs.”

I’ve taken the working title of this series, Bivouac of the Dead, from the Theodore O’Hara poem and Ambrose Bierce story of the same name. So far I’ve pulled four prints: Braxton Bragg and PGT Beauregard of the Confederate Statses Army, and Don Carlos Buell and0 Jefferson C. Davis, both of the Armies of the Cumberland and the Ohio.

Students of history may notice that the above choices are not necessarily guided by fame or success in battle. Bragg and Davis, in particular, were noted failures. My primary guide in choosing my subjects is that peculiar look in the eye.