The Unknown Faces Of The Civil War
It's easy to think "What was it all for?"
All the photos in this gallery are of men (and their pets or family) who fought during the American Civil War and died in it, but they are all unknown. No one remembers their names or what their politics were. They fought for a reason, but none of us will ever really know the true reason they fought and died.
We often post vintage images of people we will never know. This is part of the reason we do this. We want to honor them because they lived and died and had stories. I would love to make up stories about them, but that's not really what we're here for.
Today, we honor those who are forgotten. Those whose names we'll never know. Those whose stories we'll never hear.
Thanks for your interest in vintage. We think it's really important to remember and honor them, whoever they were.
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Although the Civil War passed into history generations ago, the faces of those who fought in the war are still with us. Hundreds of thousands of photographs were taken during the war years, some experts estimate. Some of those photos were of officers, battlefields, and political leaders, but many of them were portraits of individual soldiers on the way to fight, or on a break from battle. The items in the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs at the Library of Congress capture the wartime lives of the everyday soldiers, some not yet out of their teens, who fought and died on both sides of the conflict. These small, personal portraits provide a unique window into the lives of ordinary men and their loved ones caught up in an extraordinary war. - Library of Congress
You can read more about them here: (this is also a great source for teachers)
- Lynne