Good morning fellow Civil War buffs! Something new is coming to Spirit of ’61: Artifacts. These will be photos and scans of objects from 1861. Some will already be available online, such as letters and documents from the National Archives, but others will be items that I acquire specifically for this collection.
My first acquisition is this copy of Harper’s Weekly, published July 6, 1861, which covers the Wheeling Convention, the battles of Philippi and Romney, and the Confederate evacuation of Harpers Ferry. Acquiring these items will allow me to make high quality scans available to the public, sometimes for the first time.
The illustrations in these contemporary magazines are particularly important because they were created just on the cusp of the explosion in popularity of photography. So the illustrators took pains to create the most accurate images based on the information they had. Of course there was some embellishment to make the battle scenes more dramatic but I’ve found the buildings and terrain to be surprisingly accurate. This makes sense because they were trying to relay information to their readers about the events that transpired.
Having high resolution scans of these images is important because it brings out details you may never have noticed before, even if you were looking at a physical print, and of course, it preserves them for future generations.
I want researchers to be able to visit this site and find the best primary sources on early Civil War Virginia, and including these artifacts goes a long way to achieving this goal.
Spirit of '61 