Photographer Alexander Gardner reached the battlefield at Antietam in western Maryland two days after the great clash of September 17, 1862. The photographs he took, including iconic shots of dead soldiers, shocked the nation.
Gardner was in the employ of Mathew Brady while at Antietam, and his photographs were shown at Brady's gallery in New York City within a month of the battle. Crowds flocked to see them.
A writer for the New York Times, writing about the exhibition in the edition of October 20, 1862, noted that photography had made the war visible and immediate:
Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our dooryards and along the streets, he has done something very like it.
This photo essay contains some of Gardner's most striking photographs from Antietam.
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