Gettysburg Faces: Portraits and Personal Accounts
Ronald S. Coddington
362 pages, 111 full color illustrations
Gettysburg Publishing
Softcover
Signed by the author
About this volume
A collection of 100 original, rarely seen photographs of identified Union and Confederate soldiers and other participants in the Gettysburg Campaign, each accompanied by vivid accounts of their personal experiences based on letters, journals, newspaper reports, regimental histories and other documents.
The photographs are wartime portraits of men and women presented to families, friends and comrades in arms. These unique artifacts, once found in parlor photo albums, fireplace hearths and bed stands, somehow survived the ravages of time and today are in the hands of private collectors. The faces of the individuals reveal the romance and horror of a generation at war.
The stories that accompany each image detail triumphant and tragic events before, during and after the three-day fight. These individuals hailed from all walks of life—rich and poor, urban and rural, native born and immigrant, with varying levels of education and perspectives on life.
Each profile is a micro-history. Together, they tell the larger story of Gettysburg in human terms.
Among those you’ll meet: James M. “Roe” Reisinger of the 150th Pennsylvania Infantry, who suffered a wound and later received the Medal of Honor for his actions at on July 1; Helim S. Thompson of the 44th New York Infantry, severely wounded and left for dead on Little Round Top; Zachariah Angel Blanton of the 18th Virginia Infantry, wounded and captured in Pickett’s Charge; and Harriett A. Dada Emens, a nurse who cared for desperately wounded and sick in the Union army’s 12th Corps Hospital.
About the author
Ronald S. Coddington is editor and publisher of Military Images, a quarterly magazine dedicated to showcasing, interpreting and preserving Civil War photography. He has previously written a series of five books about Civil War photography, published by The Johns Hopkins University Press, and articles for The New York Times, USA Today, Civil War Times, Civil War Monitor, the Civil War News, and other publications.