"On December 17th, 1860, the South Carolina Convention met at Columbia, in that state. On account of the prevalence of small-pox it adjourned to Charleston. The following ordinance was unanimously passed: ". . . We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, that . . . the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved.* The fatal step thus taken was welcomed in the streets by the firing of cannon, the ringing of bells, and every other demonstration of joy. ‘The state had now become a free and independent nation.' In their intoxication of enthusiasm, the upper classes forgot that in great political convulsions it is always the aristocracy who suffer most. The unthinking multitude did not pause to reflect on the awful responsibility of their act, and that they must make good their ordinance against a great power which could enforce its behests with armies of a million of men."*

"A procession of gentlemen repaired to St. Philip's Church-yard, and encircling the tomb of Calhoun, made solemn obeisance before it, vowing to devote ‘their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor' to Carolinian independence. The side-walks were crowded with ladies wearing secession bonnets made of black and white Georgia cotton, decorated with ornaments of palmetto trees and lone stars. In the frenzy of enthusiastic patriotism they surpassed the men. They had put forth their hand and gathered the long-forbidden fruit, but it was like the fabled apple of Isthakar, of which he who tasted must eat the whole, and, though it was sweet as honey on one side, it was more bitter than the quintessence of gall on the other."*

"At the ceremony of signing the ordinance--a ceremony declared to be profoundly grand and impressive--a venerable clergyman, whose hair was as white as snow, implored the favoring auspices of heaven. It was affirmed that the work of thirty years was accomplished at last. Not yet. In less than three years after these events, the terror-stricken city, blackened with fire and in ruins, received an answer of doom to her prayers from the mouth of the Swamp Angel [a large Federal cannon], in the batteries on Morris Island."*

"THE IMPERIALIZED CONFEDERATE" is written in old ink on the reverse of this carte-de-visite photograph. Photographer unknown c. April 1861 (Click on the image to view further details)

From the inscription on the reverse, this southern soldier apparently arranged for his portrait on the ramparts of Fort Sumter. The image was likely taken a short time after South Carolina bombarded and captured the Union fort on 12-14 April 1861. The soldier wears long uniform coat, pants, high boots, and holstered pistol. To "celebrate" he sports a high top hat, smokes a long pipe and cradles a liquor bottle for the camera. The superstructure of the captured Union fort appears to be visible in the background of the photograph.

"Thus South Carolina commenced the civil war. She took the fearful responsibility of resisting the American government in the discharge of its manifest duty, and fired at the American flag."*

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THE SECESSION OF VIRGINIA

"But not until many weeks after South Carolina had taken her fatal determination and tasted of the mortal fruit of secession did Virginia follow her example, and then not with a conscience convinced. Virginia saw the hollowness of the allurements; she knew that upon her must fall the first and heaviest blows. There was something melancholy and grand in the motives that decided her at last to make a common cause with her impetuous companion. They bore no small resemblance to those which the great English poet has so exquisitely described on a not dissimilar occasion:

"No, no; I feel
The link of Nature draw me. Flesh of my flesh,
Bone of my bones thou art, and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe . . .
For with thee
Certain my resolution is to die."
--Paradise Lost, Book ix*

The Confederate States of America adopted their first national flag in Montgomery, Alabama on 4 March 1861. This Virginian uses that flag as a backdrop to record his confederate sentiment in the secession debate raging across his state. Division on the question was so intense when Virginia seceded on 17 April 1861, that western counties promptly seceded from the state to remain loyal to the Union.

Virginian posed in front of THE FIRST NATIONAL CONFEDERATE FLAG Ninth-plate ambrotype Photographer unknown, but possibly Rees of Richmond, VA 1861 (Click on the image to view further details)

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THE COMING OF CIVIL WAR

ANSWERING LINCOLN'S CALL FOR TROOPS A volunteer of the 8th New York Regiment (The Washington Guards) stands holding his musket and wearing overcoat, knapsack, and tinted rosette. Sixth-plate daguerreotype Photographed by Rufus Anson New York City c. April 1861 (Click on the image to view further details) This soldier of the 8th New York Regiment proudly poses in full martial regalia. He wears a patriotic tinted rosette as he prepares with optimism and enthusiasm to answer President Abraham Lincoln's call for troops to suppress the great rebellion of April 1861. He was one of extremely few who chose the daguerreotype to memorialize the occasion. At the war's beginning the daguerreotype's life span was already all but over. It survived barely long enough to record a small fragment of a nation weary from twenty years of fruitless debate, as it embraced fratricidal war with relief. The daguerreotype did well to die with its era. It was too exquisite, too delicate--for the roughshod task ahead. The technological horror of the next four years bore modern war and the modern world. It was left to coarser photographic processes to usher into American parlors, a divided nation bent on destroying itself. From 1840 to 1860 the daguerreian process recorded a generation of common citizens in a nation considered by many to be the hope of the world. It is tempting today to romanticize the individual intensity of "presence" captured in surviving daguerreotype portraits. And yet other, darker perspectives lurk within these stranded faces: --The perspective that the passage of time obscures every individual's "daily pettinesses and the small sadisms that are practised on family and friends," as well as much evil in the "intellectual atmosphere" of the era in which they live (slavery, etc.). --That "all through history it is the ‘normal, average men' who, like locust, have laid waste to the world." Americans of the daguerreian era were no exception and the Civil War was their scourge of blood. See Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York: The Free Press, 1973), 187.

"What prospect, then, was there of a triumphant issue to a war in support of slavery, if the North should be found determined to use its tremendous power? On one side, from reluctant beginnings and many disasters, power was steadily developed, until it became absolutely irresistible. On the other there was an unceasing decadence from the first enthusiasm, and complete exhaustion at last. A Northern army left in the white society of the South conspicuous marks of its enmity, and in the black an eternal monument of its friendship."*

"DEAD CONFEDERATE SOLDIER IN THE TRENCHES" Half of an albumen stereoview card Published by Taylor & Huntington of Hartford, Conneticut c. 1885 (Click on the image to view further details)

Printed on back of the card: "This photograph was taken April 2, 1865 in the Rebel trenches at Petersburg just after their capture by the Union troops. The trenches all along the lines were found to contain many dead Confederates, and this view is but one of many that was made by the photographer showing the dead just as they fell."

"The nation had lived through a day of wonderful prosperity and happiness. It seemed as if the eventide had come at last. The shades of night were fast settling on America.* But let us remember what that stern Puritan, "old John Brown," when he lay in the Virginia jail wounded, and expecting the executioner, wrote as a consolation to his wife: "I have never known a night so dark as to hinder the coming day, nor a storm so dreadful as to prevent the return of warm sunshine and a cloudless sky."*

FINIS

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STEREOGRAPH OR STEREOVIEW

Paired photographs of the same image which, when viewed through a stereoscope, appear as a single image in three dimension. There are stereo daguerreotypes and ambrotypes but most, called "card" stereographs were made of albumen prints set next to each other on a cardboard mount. A dual-lens camera made two exposures separated approximately as far apart as are human eyes.

In 1854, Frederick and William Langenheim issued the first American card series. Most stereographs date from the mid-1850s to about 1920. Viewing stereographs through the stereoscope was extremely popular parlor entertainment. No other form of photograph provides such a complete record of the world changing from agrarianism to a new industrial and urban way of life.

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Page references to John William Draper, The Civil War in America, Volume I (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1868).

THE APPLE OF ISTHAKAR

". . . is hereby dissolved." Pages 514-15
". . . million of men." Page 515
". . . on the other." Page 515
". . . on Morris Island." Pages 515-516
". . . the American flag." Page 562



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Page references to John William Draper, The Civil War in America, Volume I (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1868).

THE SECESSION OF VIRGINIA

". . . Paradise Lost, Book ix." Page 474



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Page references to John William Draper, The Civil War in America, Volume I (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1868).

ANSWERING LINCOLN'S CALL FOR TROOPS

". . . of its friendship." Pages 538-39
". . . settling on America." Page 524
". . . a cloudless sky." Pages 524-25

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