Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Period Images of Picket Duty

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Period Images of Picket Duty

    We are 60 days out from the event!

    In my research I have come across several images from the period which illustrate picket duty. Some are stylized and others appear to be quite accurate in personifying published accounts.

    image.jpeg

    This is entitled Infantryman On Picket. It is by Edwin Frobes. Found in They Fought For The Union, Francis A. Lord, PhD. Bonanza Books, New York, NY, 1965. PP 264.

    image.jpeg

    This sketch is also by Forbes and entitled The Truce; Ibid, PP 265. Lord's description reads Federal and Confederate pickets trading coffee and sugar for tobacco. They also swapped newspapers, jackknives, buttons, canteens, and gossip

    image.jpeg

    Another Forbes (I believe) sketch of a mounted picket. From the Library of Congress.

    Forbes was one of many artists who recorded the war as it happened either as an eye-witness or from accounts provided to him.

    image.jpeg

    Although illustrating a picket in winter, Julian Scott depicted the desolate sentinel (1899) and the caption that goes with it is apt: Solitary Confedrate picket mirrors the hardship of war in winter. Men charged with picket duty stood stints as early-warning attack sentries for units quartered nearby. By 1862 the rigors of army life--ragged clothing, improper diet, filth and disease--plagued troops. "I wish...I was home by my own fireside....A Soliders life...is not what it is cracked up to be," wrote a disenchanted Reb.

    Source: The Civil War, Robert Paul Jordan. National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C.,1969. PP 84-85.

    image.jpeg

    In this second painting by Julian Scott (1881) Jordan describes the men as Alert to danger, Union pickets guard a road on the perimeter of their camp. Ibid, PP 72-73.

    image.jpeg

    This final addition is perhaps the best illustration and it was completed by Conrad Wise Chapman in 1863. Thus a wartime image Jordan writes the Empty expression of a Rebel picket reflects the war-weariness of a nation after three years of bloody conflict. [The artist], who served the Confederacy as a private, painted the picket as a self-portrait, perhaps to record his own disillusionment with the war. Ibid, PP 146-147.

    Note the arbor/lean-to in the background and the disposition of his mates.

    Found other images in your own studies? Please share in this thread. Hope this helps get people in the mindset for the event. Enjoy!
    Last edited by Ambrose Bierce; 03-13-2016, 11:12 AM.
    Ivan Ingraham
    AC Moderator

  • #2
    Re: Period Images of Picket Duty

    I have an original copy of Forbes the mounted picket sketch Ivan posted and it is labeled "a quiet nibble on the cavalry skirmish line." Based on the distance between riders, he meant picket not skirmish line as the next rider in mine is about 100 yards away.

    One of the more famous songs from the war was "All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight" - a poem set to music about the death of a solitary picket.

    One of the best period descriptions of how it all worked was the letter of Feb 12, 1862 from Wilbur Fisk, 2nd VT Infantry, to the Montpelier paper wherein he describes in great detail two days on the picket line. One of the single best books from a private soldier (ranks with Hardtack and Coffee), his letters are published in Hard Marching Every Day, the Civil War letters of Private Wilbur Fisk. Will try to scan the letter it on Monday.
    Soli Deo Gloria
    Doug Cooper

    "The past is never dead. It's not even past." William Faulkner

    Please support the CWT at www.civilwar.org

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Period Images of Picket Duty

      Here is an article about a (staged) wartime photo of "pickets" and a painting made after the photo.



      Then there is this picture, that is a post war creation, but has always made me feel cold.

      Andy Ackeret
      A/C Staff
      Mess No. 3 / Hard Head Mess / O.N.V

      Comment

      Working...
      X