behind AotW

Credited to Matthew Brady, this 1864 photograph is in the collection of the Library of Congress, and is labeled

Petersburg, Va., vicinity. Maj. Thomas T. Eckert (seated, left) and others of U.S. Military Telegraph Corps

Major Thomas Thompson Eckert was General McClellan’s chief of telegraphic operations on the Peninsula and Maryland Campaigns of 1862, later Chief of the Military Telegraph Office at the War Department and Assistant Secretary of War, and, much later, President then Chairman of the Western Union Telegraph Company, to 1910.