"Then and Now" Photos of Gettysburg
Quick answer: What do Gettysburg's then-and-now photographs show?
They pair photographs taken by Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner, Timothy O'Sullivan, and others in the days after the July 1863 battle with modern images from the same spots, showing how much of the landscape survives and revealing details like the posed body at Devil's Den.
John collects pairs of photographs: the images made in and after July 1863 at Gettysburg, and modern pictures taken from the same spots. For many visitors, standing where the originals were made brings a mix of awe and grief. Mathew Brady and his assistant look across the McPherson farm, scene of heavy fighting on July 1; the house burned in 1895. From the summit of Little Round Top, fought over on July 2, you can see much of the battlefield, and the stone breastworks Union troops built that day are still there. In the Trostle farmyard, the bodies of horses from Bigelow's 9th Massachusetts Battery lie where the battery was overrun by the 21st Mississippi. Some famous images, John notes, were staged. Alexander Gardner and Timothy O'Sullivan made six photographs of a dead Confederate "sharpshooter," moving the body and propping a rifle that a sharpshooter would not have carried. Months later, Peter Weaver photographed living men posing as dead in the Slaughter Pen. The last image shows Union and Confederate veterans shaking hands across the stone wall on Cemetery Ridge at a later reunion.
Why it matters for leaders: Standing in the exact spot where history was recorded helps us read the record more carefully, including where it was shaped.
Q: Was the Devil's Den sharpshooter photo staged?
A: Yes. Historian William Frassanito showed that Gardner's team moved the body and posed it with a rifle for the "Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter" image.
Q: Whose battery was overrun at the Trostle farm?
A: Captain John Bigelow's 9th Massachusetts Battery, on July 2, 1863.
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By John Fenzel, founder and CEO of Heroes' Path Foundation