[Unidentified Civil War veteran]

Archive record

1 photograph : albumen print on card mount ; mount 17 x 11 cm (cabinet card format) | Photograph shows portrait of Union veteran with left arm amputated, holding a sword and wearing a medal.

About this photograph

The record identifies this as a portrait of an unidentified Union veteran from 1870, photographed by Fred S. Crowell. The man has lost his left arm and wears a medal, holding a sword in the surviving hand.

Five years after the war's end, many veterans sat for formal portraits that documented their service and its costs. The medal and sword mark him as a soldier, while the amputation records a wound that would have entitled him to a federal pension.

Photography had become common by the 1860s, and soldiers on both sides routinely sat for portraits before leaving for the front, giving families an image to keep. Exposure times made battlefield action impossible to capture, so the war's visual record consists almost entirely of portraits, camp scenes, fortifications, and the dead after fighting had stopped.

The cabinet card format, larger than the earlier carte de visite, became the standard for studio portraiture in the 1870s. This photograph preserves one man's service but nothing of his name, regiment, or the battle that cost him his arm.

Compiled from the catalogue record and reference notes on the formats and events involved. The archive record above is the primary source.

About the format

Rights & Attribution

Explore

More from the 1870s

[Sergeant Nicholas G. Wilson of Co. G, 138th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment in uniform]

1870

[Abigail Scott Duniway, bust portrait, facing right]

1870

[Civil War veteran holding bayoneted rifle and dog holding flag in front of painted backdrop]

1870

[Three-quarter-length portrait of an African American woman facing front]

1870

[Portrait of a dog]

1870

[William C. Kimball, Quartermaster, 7th West Virginia Cavalry, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing left]

1870