Gallant Attack of 150 Pennsylvania Bucktails, Led by Colonel Kane, Upon a Detachment of “Stonewall” Jackson’s Army, Near Harrisonburg, Va., Friday, June 6th, 1862
from a sketch by Edwin Forbes (American, 1839-1895), 1862
lithograph published in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated History of the Civil War (New York, 1895)
40.5 cm x 51 cm
Special Collections and College Archives, Musselman Library, Gettysburg College

This lithograph of the 150 Pennsylvania Bucktails depicts two groups of men fighting at close range in Harrisonburg, Virginia, in the American Civil War. Produced from a sketch by Edwin Forbes, this print was first published in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper in 1862 and reproduced again in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated History of the Civil War in 1895. The cloud of gunpowder and the waving flag on the right side of the frame convey movement, and the closeness between the battle scene and the picture plane draws the viewer into the action. Two men appear to be at the instant of receiving a mortal injury, and three already lie dead on the battlefield. The print almost theatrically depicts the climax of a battle, a scene that photography at the time was unable to accomplish due to technological constraints. Because of the similarity in its composition and subject to dramatic history paintings, Gallant Attack of 150 Pennsylvania Bucktails adheres to art-historical conventions that celebrate the heroism of war.

In contrast to the eerily still corpses in contemporary war photographs, this print is a carefully composed scene of dynamic combat. The barren and leaning trees echo the fate of the fallen and present a haunting backdrop for the quick movement of the men and the deadly fire of guns.(1) At the time of publication, this illustration was presented as news for the home front and readers who were not first-hand witnesses of the war. This portrayal of war using art-historical conventions, pictorial symbolism, and iconography is a carefully constricted representation of an actual battle. Although Forbes was present at the scene and sketched his impressions as he saw them, the final print must be understood ultimately as an artistic interpretation.

 

1 Art historian Maura Lyons states, “A correspondent for the New York Herald, who visited the battlefield shortly before (Mathew) Brady, delineated the natural destruction in even more detail: ‘I find tree after tree scarred from base to limbs so thickly that it would have been impossible to place one’s hand upon their trunks without covering the mark of a bullet. One tree was stripped of more than half its leaves by the effect of the bullets alone, and many of the twigs were cut half off, and were hanging wilted and ready to drop to the ground.” See Maura Lyons, “An Embodied Landscape: Wounded Trees at Gettysburg,” American Art 26, no. 3 (Fall 2012): 45.