Geomorphology and Civil War Combat Photography

Abstract

Civil War photographers visited the battlefield south of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in the days immediately after fighting had ceased and captured some of the most important images of combat fatalities ever produced. These iconic photographs were shocking to citizens on the home front, and at the same time, they proved immensely popular. To historians, the photographs document the nature of the landscape as well as the dress and physical condition of the soldiers. Unfortunately, the photographers often provided erroneous, vague, or even fraudulent captions and descriptions for their images, much to the confusion of postbellum historians. A century after these photographs were published, local historian William Frassanito used the geomorphology of the battleground, and specifically the unusual mechanical and chemical weathering patterns, systematic joints, and exfoliation forms of the outcropping diabase, to identify the location of many of these photographs. This combination of forensic analysis and geological study also allowed Frassanito to prove that the image many scholars consider the most famous photograph to emerge from the Civil War—Alexander Gardner’s “Rocks could not save him at the Battle of Gettysburg”—was, in reality, staged and the dramatically-positioned cadaver had been transported by the photographer and his assistants across Devil’s Den to a more photogenic location.

“Rocks could not save him at the Battle of Gettysburg”

—Alexander Gardner’s title for his photograph of a dead Confederate “sharpshooter” in Devil’s Den