William Techumseh Sherman 1820-1891
and his Generals
Mathew Brady Studio
Albumen silver print, 1865
National Portrait Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, DC

In 1865, shortly after the war ended, Mathew Brady offered to photograph William Tecumseh Sherman along with all of his generals. According to Brady, Sherman doubted that his staff would remain in Washington for the picture, but with characteristic energy the photographer appointed an hour and notified all seven men (Oliver Otis Howard, John A. Logan, William B. Hazen, Jefferson C. Davis, Henry Warner Slocum, Joseph A. Mower, and Francis P. Blair). Blair alone missed the sitting, and he is missing from the first set of photographs, as shown here. But Brady arranged to photograph him separately and added him to later versions of the portrait by pasting Blair's image onto an existing photograph, exhibited here for the first time. Brady then photographed the new, complete picture in order to make a negative that recorded Sherman's entire staff, and used it to print many copies of Sherman and His Generals.



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