These practical necessities led to a photographic record of the Civil War that emphasized preparations for and aftereffects of battles, instead of the actual battles themselves. There are no photographs of Civil War battles, but there are many photos of soldiers and officers before battles, of dead corpses on the fields after battles, and of wounded soldiers in hospitals. The state of photographic technology at the time of the Civil War thus determined how we would remember this war, because only certain kinds of images would be carried through our history as visual traces of the war.

Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson both saw the Brady photographs (or engravings of them) and wrote poetry that also captured the sobering aftereffects of butchery that took place on the battlefields. It is worth considering whether their war poetry was influenced by the Brady photographs. Read the following poems by Whitman and Dickinson in juxtaposition to two well-known Brady photos of the Civil War dead. How do the poems and the photographs illuminate each other?

 

Look Down Fair Moon  Walt Whitman Look down fair moon and       bathe this scene,  Pour softly down night's       nimbus floods on      faces  ghastly,      swollen, purple,  On the dead on their      backs with arms      toss'd wide,  Pour down your unstinted       nimbus sacred moon.  (1865)

Emily Dickinson    639  My Portion is Defeat--today-- A paler luck than Victory-- Less Paeans-fewer Bells-- The Drums don't follow Me--     with tunes-- Defeat--a somewhat slower--      means-- More arduous than Balls-- 'Tis populous with Bone and     stain-- And Men too straight to stoop      again, And piles of solid Moan--  And Chips of Blank--in Boyish      Eyes-- And scraps of Prayer-- And Death's surprise, Stamped visible--in Stone-- There's somewhat prouder,      over there-- The Trumpets tell it to the Air-- How different Victory To Him who has it--and the One Who to have had it, would      have been Contenteder--to die-- (c. 1862)

Tis populous with Bone and      stain--  And Men too straight to stoop again,  And piles of solid Moan--  And Chips of Blank--in Boyish Eyes--  And scraps of Prayer--  And Death's surprise,  Stamped visible--in Stone--