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.

At left here is brevet Lieutenant Colonel and AAG Robert Hampton Ramsey (1838-1876), of General George Thomas’ staff, previously of the 45th Pennsylvania Militia, and on the right a very tired-looking Captain Edward Henry Leib, former First Defender from Pottsville, PA and brevet Major, 5th United States Cavalry.

This is late 1865 and Leib is probably still recovering from a gunshot through his body received at Five Forks, VA on 1 April. Captain Leib was at Antietam in September 1862 and in more than 100 other actions during the war.

His Army career ended in disgrace in 1877, however, due to drinking and conduct unbecoming, related to a “severe and depressing domestic affliction” – unpleasant assertions about his wife and “an affair of honor” with his commanding officer.

Frohne’s Historic Military sold this fine carte-de-visite photograph in about 2010; I found it on ancestry.com.

This photograph of General John Buford with four members of his staff is among Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865 at the Library of Congress.

From the print:

left to right: Bvt. Lt. Col. Myles Keogh, Maj. Gen. John Buford, Capt. Peter Penn Gaskell, Capt. C.W. [Craig Wharton] Wadsworth, Lt. Col. A.P. [Albert Payson] Morrow.

Two of these men, General Buford and Captain Myles Walter Keogh, were on General McClellan’s staff at Antietam on 17 September 1862.