MILITARY CIVIL WAR The original photograph of United Stat

Sale 2631 - Lot 250

Price Realized: $ 52,500

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000

(MILITARY--CIVIL WAR.) The original photograph of "United States Soldiers at Camp William Penn." Albumen photograph, 4 1/4 x 5 3/4 inches, on original plain stiff paper mount; minimal wear. [Philadelphia, circa early 1864]

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Camp William Penn was founded in July 1863 to help meet the call for African-American soldiers. Located in Cheltenham just north of Philadelphia, it trained eleven regiments of United States Colored Troops recruited from all over the country.

The officer at left is Captain George E. Heath, second in command at Camp Penn from September 1863 to May 1864. The photo was probably taken in the early months of 1864 (the heavy overcoats suggest a winter date). It was the source image for the well-known 1864 lithograph "United States Soldiers at Camp William Penn," which added a tent and flag in the background and a drummer boy in the foreground.

The soldiers are wearing light blue coats, which appear gray in the photograph. This has inspired some revisionist historians to crop out the Union officer and pass the image off as a Confederate unit. It can be found all over the Internet with the caption "1st Louisiana Native Guard 1861."

See Kurt Luther, "Revealed: The Identity of an Officer in an Iconic Group Portrait," in Military Images, Autumn 2015. Luther reproduces another example of the photograph, asserting that its ownership has been unknown since the 1970s and that no other examples are known. The present example was acquired at a Sotheby's New York auction circa 1994, and still bears its Lot 9 tag on the mat.