Now, if this photo was a dead horse, by now it would have been beaten into something resembling patties found on the sandwiches of several large U.S. fast food chains. It's probably been featured in every notable documentary on the Civil War, and certainly the blogosphere is feasting upon this image today for its 150th anniversary. Rightfully so, I might add, considering what it captures. But, while it may be a bit redundant to cover this image here on my modest blog, I have a computer, a brain, and an hour of free time, so why not?
So with that, here we go.
As with most images like this, I tend to be less interested in the well known figures shown, and instead get captivated by the details. One thing that instantly caught my eye was a wagon towards the background.
On it the maltese cross of the V Corps can clearly be seen. That's pretty cool to be able to ID a piece of equipment to a particular unit, but can we dive a little deeper into the details here? There's writing below the cross that says "[something] DIV 5th CORPS." Sadly this background stuff wasn't quite in focus. But dammit I want to figure out which division this wagon belonged to. I'm weird, I know.
So, how can we figure this out? Well, I think we can possibly eliminate two of the four divisions that belonged to the V Corps because of a photo we analyzed last week.
In this photo of the AotP's crossing of the Rapidan earlier in May, we saw the probable insignia of either the 2nd of 4th Divisions of the V Corps. Those two were mostly made up of troops from the discontinued I Corps, hence the circle inside the maltese cross. If we assume that the wagons of these two divisions had the combined insignia, which I'm not saying we really should, then you could make an argument that the wagon in the Massaponax image was probably from the 1st or 3rd Divisions of the V Corps. Unfortunately the writing in that image is blurred so we'll never know.
But wait! Look at the dude standing beside the wagon:
He's wearing a fez! That means he's zouave! As far as I know only the 1st Division of the V Corps had zouaves...but no, I don't think that logic will take us anywhere. You see, one of the regiments of the headquarters guard at this time was the 114th Pennsylvania, a.k.a. Collis' Zouaves that almost certainly would have been nearby at this time. Here's a photo of them later on in 1864:
Looking elsewhere in the photo, it seems this image wasn't exactly candid:
Many of the staff officers are definitely aware there's a photographer here, and it seems can't help but pose. My favorite personality, however, doesn't seem to care if he was being made famous:
And for good reason. Look at the guy towards the top of this zoom. He was observing, and probably hearing, what Grant and Meade were discussing, oblivious to his surroundings. I hope this guy ended up having grandkids, because the story of witnessing these two men plan the second half of the Overland Campaign is a tale I sure would have been proud to pass on.
With a view like this, O'Sullivan was sure to take multiple shots of the scene. Here's one he took in stereoview:
In this version Grant is sitting down on one of the benches, looking like he is quietly thinking while puffing a cigar.
So, could this second image help us with our wagon mystery from earlier? Maybe O'Sullivan changed his focus enough to let us read the writing in this one.
Sadly, no. The wagon train was in motion during this shot, and therefore blurred in the background. Oh, well.
One last note on this scene is a seemingly random and nondescript soldier caught in the photo.
Amazingly enough, through some detective work much more thorough than mine, in 2011 the authors of Mysteries and Conundrums posted about the identity of this fellow. It's a pretty neat post, and I highly recommend it. This man, named Leander Herron, would actually go on to receive a Medal of Honor for actions that occurred in Kansas in 1868, where Herron was posted as a soldier in the 3rd United States Infantry following his Civil War service.
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