Maryland, Antietam, President Lincoln on the Battlefield, October 2, 1862
This image of President Abraham Lincoln was taken by Alexander Gardner, just two weeks after the Union Army victory over the Confederate Army at Antietam on September 17, 1862, during the American Civil War.
In 1856, Gardner came to New York from Scotland to work with Mathew Brady. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Gardner assisted Brady's effort to make a photographic history of the war, but in 1863 broke with him and set up his own business in Washington, DC. In 1866, Gardner's two-volume Sketch Book, composed of actual positives pasted in place, was published with a text probably composed by Gardner himself. The photographs, presumably purchased by the War Department, include pictures of the railroads, bridges, roads, rivers, camp sites, artillery, battlefields, fortifications, headquarters, officers, and men of the Army of the Potomac.
Maryland, Antietam, President Lincoln on the Battlefield. National Archives Identifier: 533297/Local Identifier: 165-SB-23. View in National Archives Catalog.
Names of the military personnel seen in the photograph are included in an alternate version of the image in the National Archives Catalog.
You can explore more Civil-War era photographs held by the Still Picture Branch through the National Archives Catalog, through the Special Media Records Division blog: The Unwritten Record, on History Hub, or in person at our research room in College Park, MD.