Behind every Civil War picture there is a story, sometimes hard to find. Author Ron Coddington is a detective on the case

Ron Coddington at the Civil War show in Dalton, Ga.

The two troopers with the 13^th New York Cavalry wanted their loved ones to know they were ready for whatever would come at them. A painted patriotic camp scene serves as a backdrop as they pose, swords at their sides and their feet resting on a photographer’s props. One gazes at the camera, his ample whiskers concealing what might be a sly smile.

“It’s a favorite of mine. It’s in pristine condition,” said Ronald S. Coddington, an author, historian and journalist who was manning a table Saturday at the Chickamauga Civil War Show in Dalton, Ga. The show concludes Sunday.

The New Jersey native was talking about one of the 2,700 carte de visite, or small portrait cards, he has collected since he was 14. Unlike most people, Coddington, now 55, took his passion to a much deeper level.

He is working on his fifth book – about nurses – in his “Faces of the Civil War" series for Johns Hopkins University Press. He publishes Military Images magazine and also has written for Civil War News and the The New York Times’ Disunion series during the Civil War’s sesquicentennial. (Full disclosure: I worked during the 1990s with Coddington at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution; where he was an illustrator, caricaturist and graphic artist).

This weekend, Coddington interacted with patrons on a number of levels, scanning tintypes, ambrotype images and cartes de visite for possible print and online galleries for this magazine, getting story ideas, networking and weighing in on a card’s value, a la “Antiques Roadshow” style. While the market currently is a bit soft, the higher-quality images can still draw a pretty penny, some up to the tens of thousands of dollars.

The Arlington, Va., resident spoke briefly spoke with me about what he and about 100 other such collectors do to learn more about the subjects of cards. Coddington goes the extra mile, researching newspapers, old records, pension records and more.

“Show me a photo of somebody and let me read about them,” he said. He writes about 1,000 words for each image appearing in his books.

Many of the photographs in his books belong to other collectors. He purchased the one of the men with the 13^th New York at the Dalton show about 15 years ago.

(Courtesy of Ronald S. Coddington)

The gentleman on the right is Q.M. Sgt. Henry Augustus Blanchard, a “big, stout, square-built” fellow who served until the end of the war, despite declining health. His photo and vignette appeared in Coddington’s first book, “Faces of the Civil War: An Album of Union Soldiers and Their Stories.”

Coddington does not know the identity of the other NCO. He said that happens about 25 percent of the time.

Cartes de visite were the baseball cards of the time. Unlike a tintype photographc, the cards came from a glass plate negative, allowing a soldier or sailor to purchase a dozen copies to hold or send to loved ones by letter.

Coddington spoke a few years ago with the Civil War Trust about Military Images, which has pushed its online and social media presence.

Reverse side of scanned cartes de visite

He told the preservation group: “Over time, I’ve come to understand and appreciate that these rare soldier portraits humanize the terrible conflict that raged on our soil during the four bloodiest and most violent years in our nation’s history. When I see these photos, which were personal, intimate objects shared with family, friends and comrades at a time of war, I am reminded of these soldiers’ courage, and my own responsibilities as an American and a world citizen.”