"War Is Hell"

In 1864, Union general William Tecumseh Sherman led a crushing campaign through the South and on September 2, occupied Atlanta.

The capture of Atlanta was a significant victory in the Civil War and insured the re-election of President Abraham Lincoln. This photograph by George N. Barnard depicts a "Hell Hole" during Sherman's campaign.

A well-known daguerrean artist in Oswego, New York, George N. Barnard had opened a photography studio in Syracuse by 1854. He subsequently became affiliated with Mathew Brady's gallery in Washington, D.C., and photographed Lincoln's inauguration in 1861.

As an official Union Army photographer during the Civil War, he was given two mules, a covered wagon, and an African-American driver to follow several military campaigns, most notably General William Tecumseh Sherman's famous march in 1864 from Chattanooga to Atlanta.

To view other Civil War photographs by Barnard, see our virtual exhibition American Photographs: The First Century.

Source: Merry Forresta. Helios: Photography Online (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art, 2000) at http://americanart.si.edu/collections/exhibits/helios/index.html.

Pictured: George N. Barnard, 1819–1902, The "Hell Hole," New Hope Church, Georgia, from Photographic Views of Sherman's Campaign, plate 27, about 1866, albumen print on paper mounted on paperboard, 10 1/8 x 14 1/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Charles Isaacs Collection made possible in part by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment.