behind AotW

I’ve been looking into one of the artillery officers I mentioned last week, Captain Elijah Taft. I had nothing on him to begin with, and he’s still an enigma to me today.

5th NY Battery monument, Gettysburg (New York at Gettysburg)

I prefer to bring you well-rounded posts when profiling the soldiers at Antietam, and usually I can give you something deeper than places and dates. In Captain Taft’s case, though, all I really have are some tantalizing hints to the man’s life. Questions with ties to facets of 19th Century American history I know too little about.

Perhaps you’ll pitch in?

At the bottom of this page, from the famous Gardner photo of October 1862, are a group of officers of the Army of the Potomac with President Lincoln. It may be one of the most recognizable images of Antietam.

Prominent among these men by his size and attitude–if not location, at far left–is Colonel Delos B. Sackett, McClellan’s Inspector General. Due to that prominence, if for no other reason, it’s long past time I looked into him.

Delos Bennett Sackett (1822-1885)

Here he is, nearly as large as life, in Colonel’s blues.

Sackett was a career Army officer of lengthy service, ultimately achieving the rank of Brigadier General and Inspector General of the US Army in 1881. He died in that office in 1885 after 45 years in service…

Ron Coddington is a collector of (and writer about) Civil War carte de visites (CDVs, history). You probably already knew that. But you may not have known that he also blogs, at Faces of War. He doesn’t update on a regular schedule–and most posts are about the writing and publishing process–but once in a while he blogs about the photographs themselves. My idea of a great use of pixels.

Ron recently talked about buying a CDV of three Clark brothers from Maine. One of them, Charles Amory Clark, was with the 6th Maine Infantry at Antietam and later was awarded the Medal of Honor for extraordinary leadership on the Chancellorsville Campaign.

C. A. Clark

Inspired by Ron’s post about the picture–and by that face–I’ve learned a little more about Clark …