The Press in the Civil War Era

“The Press in the Civil War Era: Pioneers in Print and Photography” describes the role the press had in reporting the Civil War, focusing on the way in which the war transformed the press into a more visually based form of communication. It provides an overview of the print and photographic materials published in the mid-to-late nineteenth century press to demonstrate how images gradually became part of the mainstream press, and it profiles Mathew Brady as a pioneer in a form of media much more common today than it was in the 1860s. Using materials from this chapter, students should appreciate the press of the Civil War era relative to innovations in technologies that have demonstrated a recurring reliance on pre-existing forms of communication, including artistic expression. They should be able to identify similar and different features in the storytelling techniques of print and visual media, and they should explain the role of the Civil War in helping popularize the new form of media. Key words, names, and phrases associated with Chapter 5 include: Antebellum print (Elijah Lovejoy and Harriet Beecher Stowe); Mathew Brady and his photographers; daguerreotypes and visual technologies; and Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated.