More than 160 years ago, photographer Timothy O'Sullivan took breathtaking images of Grant council of war at Virginia church. Today, O'Sullivan is still a man of mystery

Grant leans over Meade's shoulder (Library of Congress); balcony view today (Kathy Hart)

Timothy O’Sullivan's Civil War photographs documented the horror of combat and the grind of camp life, drilling and marching in less deadly moments. While best known for those four years, O'Sullivan is getting attention now for his compelling images made a few years later out West.

Robert Sullivan, in his new book, “Double Exposure: Resurveying the West with Timothy O’Sullivan,” focuses on the enigmatic photographer’s work after the Civil War.

O’Sullivan, as the author tells the Columbia Journalism Review, left no autobiography, letters or papers. While O’Sullivan is well-known in Civil War circles, it’s safe to say most Americans know little to nothing about him. He died at age 42 of tuberculosis.

Thankfully, O’Sullivan’s work speaks for itself – from “A Harvest of Death” at Gettysburg (1863) to Iceberg Canyon on the Colorado River, circa 1871.

At about noon on May 21, 1864, O’Sullivan (left), using a stereo camera, captured an extraordinary moment on the grounds and from the second-floor balcony of Massaponax Baptist Church in northern Virginia. Union generals Ulysses S. Grant and George Meade and others rested on church pews, wrote orders and surveyed a map after the bloody fighting at nearby Spotsylvania Court House.

John Hennessy, retired chief historian at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park and a history blogger, told the Picket the images are simply remarkable.

“The series at Massaponax Church is a rare, completely candid series of shots of the army headquarters functioning,” he wrote. “I know of nothing else like it from the Civil War.”

My sole visit to the church came in 2016. With my parents, I walked the grounds. The sanctuary was closed, so I could not ascend the balcony to see what O’Sullivan saw below.

Since then, I have been trying to get an image replicating the view, and late last year Kathy Hart, a lifelong member of Massaponax Baptist Church and its history team, came through, taking the photo above on a rainy day.

Hart has been helpful in describing soldiers’ graffiti still on the walls of the church, Civil War tours she leads and more about the small congregation today.

A team from the American Battlefield Trust last summer shot photos and video at Massaponax for its “Step into History” series. The video was released in February.

In the immersive video, Garry Adelman, director of history and education for the Trust, says O’Sullivan must have been excited as he ascended the stairs to record Grant’s council of war.

I asked the trust for more information about the video shoot at the church, which is at the corner of a very busy U.S. 1 (then called Telegraph Road) and Massaponax Church Road. (The church address is 5101 Massaponax Church Road)

Adelman (left) and team at Massaponax Church (Courtesy of Garry Adelman)

“Doing this was complex stuff,” Adelman said. “Shooting in the church and since we shot in 360 making sure that crew didn’t show up in video was a challenge. Then, outside the church was done on a ladder and using a stick to approximate the window height, as seen in the photo.”

O’Sullivan’s treasured photographs are in the collection of the Library of Congress.

In one candid view, Grant leans over Meade’s shoulder to study a map as they plot the next phase of the Overland Campaign -- a move toward the North Anna River. In another, Grant sits with a cigar clenched in his teeth. Also present is Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana and staff officers. Wagons of the Federal V Corps rumble by in the background on what is now Massaponax Church Road. Grant’s chief of staff John Rawlins also was there.

Grant realized on May 21 that Confederates remained in strong positions after fierce fighting at Spotsylvania and he decided to move to the southeast to try to get them out in the open. Much of the Union army used Smith Station Road and Massaponax Church Road as it started its march to the North Anna, according to Hennessy.

Period map shows church and Telegraph Road (Library of Congress; click to enlarge)

John Cummings, in his Spotsylvania Civil War Blog, has written about the day that Grant and his subordinates stopped by the church.

According to Cummings, Grant wrote one dispatch from Massaponax, to Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside. One of the O’Sullivan photographs shows Grant scribbling on a paper pad.

GENERAL: You may move as soon as practicable upon the receipt of this order, taking the direct ridge road to where it intersects the Telegraph road, thence by the latter road to Thornburg Cross-Roads. If the enemy occupy the crossing of the Po in such force as to prevent your using it, then you will hold the north side at Stanard's Mill until your column is passed, and move to Guiney's Bridge. General Wright will follow you and will cover the crossing of the Po for his own corps. At Guiney's Bridge you will receive further directions if you are forced to take that road. If successful in crossing at Stanard's your march will end at Thornburg.
U. S. Grant,
Lieutnant-General.

Grant writer an order while seated on church pew (Library of Congress)

The Metropolitan Museum in New York, which has a copy of one of the photographs, says of that day:

“The chaotic study is one of the most daring made by any Union photographer. … Evidence suggests that it had been a disastrous day for the Union troops, as the losses were heavy and no strategic advantage had been gained. In the background are rows of horse-drawn baggage wagons and ambulances transporting supplies for the next day’s engagement and the wounded to field hospitals.”

A soldier in one of the O’Sullivan photographs went on to receive the Medal of Honor for postwar gallantry. You can read about that here.

In 1863, during the middle of the conflict, Massaponax gave letters of dismissal to black members and they formed smaller churches. Confederate and Union forces alternately used the church as a stable, hospital and meeting place during various campaigns.

For a time, the graffiti on the balcony was covered by whitewash that covered “unsightly marks and the sad stories were forgotten.” The faded writing is now protected by Plexiglass.

A portion of graffiti left by Civil War soldiers (Massaponax Baptist Church)

According to a document kept by the history team, noted historian Douglas Southall Freeman had this to say about the graffiti:

 “A careful survey of the whole subject of the inscriptions at Massaponax Church leads me to conclude that you have something almost unique. The church was located in the no man’s land on the right flank of the Confederate position at Fredericksburg. The church was consequently visited by men of both armies. I do not know of another instance where inscriptions of both sides have survived to this extent. To extinguish them in any way would be to destroy a treasure which will become more and more interesting to visitors as it is known.”

Today, the church has one foot in history and the other very much in the 21^st century, meeting the needs of those near and far.

The congregation’s diverse 50 or so active members – many of whom commute to work in the Washington, D.C, metro area -- sponsor a food pantry. They also take part in the Samaritan’s Purse ministry, an international relief effort. “We teamed up with the local elementary school to help provide snacks for low-income students. Also, we visit the seniors at a nearby nursing facility playing bingo,” says Hart. (Photo, courtesy Kathy Hart)

A contemporary service is held at 11 a.m. on Sundays.

“Our mission is to love God and each other through worship; to grow in Christ through discipleship; to serve and fellowship together and to impact the community and the world for Christ,” says Hart.

Civil War aficionados stop by all the time to gaze at the church or a historical marker outside about Grant’s council of war.

O’Sullivan, 160 years after he traveled to Massaponax, is getting new attention through Sullivan’s book.

The photographer was an integral part of Clarence King's survey of the West, undertaken between 1867 and 1872. It covered a vast swath of terrain, from the border of California eastward to the edge of the Great Plains. 

Sullivan, in his Q&A with the Columbia Journalism Review, says his subject “never stopped being a war photographer in the sense that there was violence enacted on the communities that the surveys moved through: either by the surveyors, or the way the surveyors framed the land, or the people who were there.”

Keith F. Davis and Jane L. Aspinwall in 2011 published “Timothy H. O’Sullivan: The King Survey Photographs.”

Davis, a photography curator, author and collector, said O’Sullivan was a key and essential figure of his time.

“The challenge was to grapple with a set of related but distinct questions: what he did, why the pictures look the way they do and why this work remains so relevant to today’s artistic practice,” Davis told the Picket in a recent email.

“Despite (or because of?) the dearth of information about O’Sullivan the person, his pictures have had genuinely special resonance for every succeeding generation of viewers. O’Sullivan is an extraordinary, mysterious gift that keeps on giving.”

Mathew Brady's photographs captured the reality of the Civil War. A new gravesite memorial celebrates the diversity of his subjects

A partial view of the memorial depicts Brady in foreground (Congressional Cemetery)

A new memorial at his gravesite in Washington, D.C., celebrates pioneering Civil War photographer Mathew B. Brady’s legacy.

Photo historian Larry West spearheaded the effort to honor Brady, who died destitute in 1896 and was buried in Congressional Cemetery. The photographer is remembered for his depictions of famous and everyday Americans, and battlefield scenes that brought the horrors of war to American's doorsteps.

Matthew B. Brady

A dedication on Sept. 17 showcased life-size bronze statues of President Abraham Lincoln and civil rights figure Frederick Douglass – among famous Americans photographed by Brady -- a portrait on stone of Brady, a reproduction metal camera and 85 fired porcelains of images, most by the photographer and his associates.

“The memorial features Mathew, recognizing him as the entrepreneur, innovator, team leader and posing artist that he was,” West wrote the Picket in an email this week. 

While it does not include his famous scenes from the Antietam and Gettysburg battlefields and those of campsites, many of the porcelains depict people who were wartime figures.

Historians this year are marking Brady’s 200^th birthday, emphasizing his importance to the field of photojournalism.

“Brady’s photographs of Gettysburg caused a sensation when viewed by members of the public,” says Congressional Cemetery. “Americans were little used to scenes of war that before had only existed in imagination.

“The prior year, in 1862, Brady had shocked the public when he exhibited photographs of dead enemy soldiers, captured by associates Alexander Gardner and James M. Gibson, from the Battle of Antietam.”

Lincoln, Douglass and Anna Murray-Douglas (Congressional Cemetery)

Brady’s team took more than 10,000 photographs by war’s end. He had spent some $100,000 but the federal government initially declined to buy them. Brady declared bankruptcy and struggled financially for the rest of his life.

Eventually, the government purchased Brady's photographs for $25,000, providing him some financial relief. Fortunately, most are available on the Library of Congress website.

Upon his passing in 1896, veterans of the 7^th New York Infantry helped finance Brady's funeral and interment at Congressional Cemetery.

Sept. 17 dedication in southeast Washington (Congressional Cemetery)

"His photographs, and those he commissioned, had a tremendous impact on society at the time of the war, and continue to do so today," says the American Battlefield Trust.

West, a board member of Congressional Cemetery, designed and provided primary financial backing for the memorial.

“Celebrating Brady's outstanding artistic achievements, the memorial reflects the diversity of his subjects and the Washington, D.C. community,” a Facebook post says.

Congressional Cemetery, founded early in the 19^th century, has graves of Washington residents and numerous national figures.

It is the final resting place for about 600 Union service members and 100 Confederates.

“Generals lie next to privates, and brothers who fought on opposite sides rest only a few feet apart.”

Among those buried there are Alfred Pleasanton, a Union cavalry general, Maj. Gen. Andrew Humphreys and executed Lincoln conspirator David Herold.

Visitors can take a self-guided, Civil War-themed walking tour.

Alexander Gardner: Lasting images

Although often overshadowed by his former employer, Mathew B. Brady, Alexander Gardner was the one who actually took many of the Civil War’s most famous, and unsettling, pictures, including the dead at Antietam and Gettysburg. With the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, the National Portrait Gallery is preparing a major exhibit on Gardner’s work. • Article

Web exhibit brings you the war in 3-D

It is a portal into the past, but unlike most photography that conjures a bygone era, "Post Civil War Images of South Carolina" is in 3-D. It's all courtesy of Web designer Buff Ross of Sullivans Island and the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia. The exhibit features "anaglyphs" of 53 steroscopic images taken by Sam Cooley and two others. • Article