Series II: Portraits by Alexander Gardner

Series II. Portraits by Alexander Gardner contains albumen portraits of government officials and prominent figures in the Civil War, all of whom were photographed in Gardner's Washington, DC, studio in the mid-1860s. The series is arranged in two subseries: Individuals and Groups. The origin of the photographs is unknown, but they appear to have arrived at the Society as unmounted albumen prints which were then attached to sheets of card stock by the Society's bindery staff.

There are individual portraits of seven men, three of whom, David Farragut, Marsena Patrick, and William T. Sherman, were leaders in the Union forces. Sitters Benjamin Baker French, Hugh McCulloch, and William Seward were officials in President Lincoln's administration, and Peter Force was an historian, collector, compiler, and ex-mayor of Washington, DC.

Groups include several portraits that appeared as wood engraved illustrations in Harper's Weekly. Notable among them are two formal portraits that were published in 1865: one of Col. Lafayette Baker, Lt. Luther Baker, and Lt. Col. Everton Conger planning the capture of John Wilkes Booth (May 13th, page 292), and another of Lt. Col. Pritchard, Capt. Hudson, and Lt. Stauber, the three captors of Jefferson Davis, a modified version which appeared on page 373 of the June 17th issue. The latter illustration carried a credit line of Photographed by Gardner, and Published by Philip & Solomon, Washington, D.C.