Generalsandbrevets is back
9 April 2012
Update, Final: Generalsandbrevets.com was alive again briefly in 2012. For some years after that it was just a link farm for various commercial ads and most of the underlying content was gone. I recommended you not go there – it was shady. Now, though, is now truly and effectively gone.
As at least one commenter below observed, you can find Generalsandbrevets available in original (2008) format via the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive.
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Original post of 30 Jan 2010, “Generalsandbrevets Gone”: As I’m sure you know by now, the excellent web gallery Generals of the American Civil War is offline. The site was a comprehensive online collection of photographs of very nearly every Confederate and Union General (about 1,000 individuals) – plus most of the 1,400 Federal officers who were made General by brevet. It had operated since 2001 as generalsandbrevets.com, and I remember it being up under another url for at least a couple of years before that.
When I first noticed the loss back in March 2009, I asked site owner and collector Mikel Uriguen about it by email. He could only tell me that he could no longer keep it going. I asked if I could help in any way. I also offered to host and maintain the site on his behalf, but have no further reply.
On the original site he wrote:
I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Mikel Uriguen and I live in Bilbao, a city in the Spanish Basque-Country. I’m a long-time enthusiast of the American Civil War. On this site I’ve tried to collect pictures of every general officer of the War. It’s usually interesting to put a face with a name.
In another section of this site you’ll also find the pictures of those officers appointed to brigadier or major general by brevet.
I realize that this type of site might be a little dull to some visitors. But we have to remember the real value of data-base sites: they assemble related material (in this case pictures) in an organized way and offer it to those who are interested.
He’s absolutely right about the tremendous value of his online collection. For that reason, I’m having trouble simply accepting that it’s gone. I think it’s too useful to too many people to let it go extinct.
As an experiment in PHP programming I’ve prototyped a database-backed site that might reprise the concept of generalsandbrevets. I have excess capacity on my own server and I could make some time over the coming months to re-gather and index the photos and push them into the database. It wouldn’t be difficult with a good picture “scraping” script – or help from online friends. Given that all the pictures he so carefully collected and posted are in the public domain, there’s no legal reason I couldn’t build another website home for these Generals’ faces.
The problem, of course, is that it was Mikel’s site – and his image collection – and he’s chosen (or been forced) to take it down. The reasons are none of my business, and his privacy is key. I feel I’ve already intruded enough and don’t want to badger him again.
So. What to do, what to do. Swoop in like some kind of vulture? Just let it drop?
Either of my readers have a thought?
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January 30th, 2010 at 9:30 pm
Swoop. By all means, swoop like a mother.
January 30th, 2010 at 9:39 pm
I second Harry. It’s criminal to see work that’s obviously taken a lot of time and energy disappear like that. If it’s all in PD, then there’s no legal reason not to. It might be prudent to send him an e-mail letting him know what you plan to do, not necessarily expecting a response.
January 31st, 2010 at 9:54 am
Brian,
I visited that site a few times but did not copy any pictures as I was unsure re copyright. If the photos are in the PD, and you can replicate that site, please do and let me know how I could help.
Getting photos like that and others especially relating to the Maryland Campaign (including maps) on your site or a linked site such as those from the LOC, Harpers Ferry, etc., would be very valuable for many researchers.
Larry
January 31st, 2010 at 4:28 pm
Go for it if you can Brian. It is quite useful.
January 31st, 2010 at 6:40 pm
Another vote for SWOOP and notify. Maybe he’s turning the free website into a paying book, which would account for no reply to a very kind (and rational) offer: I’ve seen several people do that. Still, if public domain, a valuable resource should not be allowed to perish.
January 31st, 2010 at 7:20 pm
Brian,
Rock and roll. You will be doing all of us a gigundous favor if you do.
Eric
January 31st, 2010 at 9:35 pm
Brian,
Go for it! I was sad to see that site go since I had planned to use quite a few of the pictures at my Petersburg Campaign site. Generals and Brevets was an invaluable online resource.
February 1st, 2010 at 12:31 pm
I agree the “Generals and Brevets” collection is too valuable to lose. You can still find the contents at the “Internet Archive” website at:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://generalsandbrevets.com
It is a great site for retrieving lost content…
February 3rd, 2010 at 7:20 pm
OK. I guess I know what I should do next. Thanks, friends.
February 4th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
Just dedicate the site to Mikel up top, or announce that that is where you got the inspiration, then you will have satisfied whatever code of internet courtesy exists. It seems likely, however, that he must have availed himself of copyrighted images at some point. Hard to say.
David
February 4th, 2010 at 6:03 pm
By the way, it looks like the site was captured by the LoC Single Sites Web Archive: http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/lcwa/mrva0013.0015/default.html
Reconstituted as of a particular date here:
http://webarchives.loc.gov/collections/lcwa0013/20060628191555/http://www.generalsandbrevets.com/
February 19th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
Put the photos up at all costs. Don’t have the “slows” like McClellan, attack like Jackson!
October 21st, 2010 at 9:34 pm
Brian, This was such a valuable site and contained images I’d never seen. I’m attempting to obtain a copy of the image of the three Hartsuff brothers (all from Livingston county, Michigan) that was on Mikel’s site.
April 14th, 2025 at 12:59 am
Hello,
Are the generalsandbrevets.com digital images now found on the LOC Web Archives website in the public domain?
Can any of the digital images be used in a book for commercial purposes?
Did anyone find out if the digital images are still in copyright?
Thanks in advance for any answers.
April 14th, 2025 at 9:57 am
Hi Paul,
The general answer is that any American photograph published in the Civil War era (in fact, any published before 1929) is in the public domain by US copyright law. Images created, but not published, went into the public domain 70 years after their creator’s death. I am confident no photographer working in the 1860s was alive after 1955 (70 years ago) – so it’s easy to make the blanket statement that any photograph created during or before the Civil War is in the public domain.
Digital copies have no copyright protection beyond that of the originals.
You should still carefully credit the source of any photos you use, of course.
I am not a lawyer and cannot give legal advice. But this is pretty straightforward.
I talked about this in a post on this blog almost 20 years ago, for a little more on the subject.
April 14th, 2025 at 10:38 am
Hello Brian,
Thank you for your reply and the link to that information.
I understand and agree that these digital images are to be considered in the Public Domain. The reason I wanted to be sure is that I have come across a couple of museums that take the position that a digital image taken of a work in the Public Domain is a copyrighted digital image due to factors like position, lighting, and distance from the work.
I agree and think that the digital images of both Union and Confederate soldiers and officers that were on the defunct generalsandbrevets.com website, now found on the web archive LOC, would be considered in the Public Domain, because the originals were taken by photographers working for the U.S. Government and thus would have immediately and automatic been in the Public Domain. Especially as you have pointed out that the U.S. Copyright laws were not formalized until after 1929.
Including appropriate credit lines in accordance with creative common licensing when using these digital images is the best approach, I think.
Thank you for your reply and the information you posted.
Best regards,
Paul Innes.