Civil War scene from Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's notorious campaign across Georgia in 1864 and 1865 depicting the depredation and destruction of countryside near the Atlantic coast. Amidst smoke, Sherman sits on his horse, looks through a scope, and scouts the horizon. Around him, white men Union soldiers and an African American man dismantle railroad tracks, and further down the line a railroad car has been set on fire. Newly free African Americans leave on foot and by raft. In the right, an African American family of a mother, father, son, and grandfather, attired in worn and torn cloths, carry bundles as they travel over the dismantled railroad tracks. The mother holds her son’s one hand while he uses the other to rub his eyes. The father rests his hand on the back of the grandfather. Behind them, two Union soldiers cut down a telegraph pole. In the background, Union soldiers round up cattle, burn homesteads and a bridge, and fire upon retreating Confederate soldiers. In the lower margin is a portrait of Sherman., Title from item., Plate signed by Darley lower right corner., Manuscript note on verso: Acc. No. 0479; Gift Minnie Owen., See Nancy Finlay's Inventing the American past: the art of F.O.C. Darley (New York: New York Public Library, 1999), p. 28 and opp. p. 32., Accessioned 2000., Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of the Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014., Ritchie, a New York painter and prolific engraver of portraits and genre scenes, produced many engravings after the works of the premier illustrator of the 19th century and native Philadelphian, F.O.C. Darley.
Creator
Ritchie, Alexander Hay, 1822-1895, engraver
Date
c1868
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department **GC-Civil War [P.9854]
