Unique among the many new technologies that played significant roles in the Civil War, photographic images offer a sense of immediate experience that crosses many generations.  Photography gave the people of the 1860s, including those not personally involved in actual combat, the ability to witness events of the war.  Even for later generations, like ourselves, whose understanding of the Civil War has been strongly influenced by subsequent historical developments, these early photographic images retain a freshness and vitality that enlarges our own experience of that pivotal historic conflict.

Although many Civil War photographers worked in the Eastern Theater, some worked in the Western Theater.  Most notable among these was George Barnard, who photographed various places throughout the area, including Tennessee.  The above photograph shows Barnard's photographic equipment while he travelled with the Union army in Georgia, but the depicted equipment is similar to, and indeed may be identical to, the equipment he carried during his work in Tennessee.
 
 

For further information on Civil War photography see the photography bibliography.
 

(Thanks to Nathan Kinser, assistant to the Research Coordinator, for the research used in these pages.)

  Civil War Technology & Industry in Tennessee

Last update:  June 7, 2001