Civil War: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints, DeGolyer Library
About the Collection
Overview
Civil War: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints provides a sample of the photographs, images, albums, and more, relating to the Civil War held by SMU's DeGolyer Library. These items illustrate both the Confederate and Union sides of the war.
DeGolyer Library digital collections are part of CUL Digital Collections, which contain thousands of digitized photographs, manuscripts, imprints, and works of art held by SMU's Central University Libraries special collections.
Collection Materials
The Civil War digital collection contains unique items pertaining to the war between the states and its aftermath. There are many portrait cartes de visite of Union and Confederate generals, officers, and soldiers, military men so influential during the course of the War.
The DeGolyer Library also has a particularly strong set of holdings of Texas-related Civil War images, which are found in the Lawrence T. Jones III Texas Photographs collection.
Throughout both collections, there are startling images of slave children, the destruction of war, and women left at home while their relatives were off fighting.
Holdings and Highlights
Included in this collection are:
- a set of 17 items from two editions of Alexander Gardner’s seminal 1866 work: Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War
- 6 items from the Alexander Gardner cartes de visite and portraits. Photographs by Gardner, including his portraits of Abraham Lincoln, are some of the most iconic of the conflict.
- 23 landscape images from the Andrew J. Russell Civil War photographs
- Photographic views of Sherman's campaign, from negatives taken in the field, ca. 1864-1866, by George Barnard, containing 61 prints and an accompanying booklet
- 56 items from the Collection of Civil War and military cartes de visite and portraits
- a set of 15 engraved cartes-de-visite of Confederate generals and politicians from the Cartes de visite albums accession
- 26 prints, including many photographs by Mathew Brady, from Civil War images
- 36 stereoviews from the Collection of Civil War era stereographs
- Trip through Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania: an interesting Civil War album containing 129 photographs made by brothers T. Dwight Biscoe (1840-1930) and Walter S. Biscoe (1853-1933) on a post-Civil War trip through Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania primarily of Civil War battlefields and cemeteries. Mounts include detailed descriptions about the battles: the battlefields of Fisher's Hill, Cedar Creek near Winchester, Virginia, Harper's Ferry, Antietam and Hagerstown, Maryland.
Digital Collections Guidelines and Procedures
Items in Central University Library Digital Collections are digitized following the SMU Central University Libraries Digitization Guidelines and Procedures. Digital collections are created under the guidelines of the SMU CONTENTdm Guide: Framework for Building a Collection, or through specialized metadata profiles tailored for the collection.
Usage
Copyright usage terms vary throughout the collection. Each item contains information about usage terms. If SMU does not have the right to publish the item on the Internet, only the item's metadata will be available and the digitized object will be available on a restricted access basis. Such items may only be viewed on campus. When items are available for use, please cite DeGolyer Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University. A high-quality version of these files may be obtained for a fee by contacting degolyer@smu.edu.
Contact Info
For more information about the collection, please contact degolyer@smu.edu.
