The Charge of the 8th Vermont at the Battle of Winchester. Alfred R. Waud. https://www.loc.gov/item/2004660090/
During the Civil War era people saw amazing changes in technology. Weapons and transportation was just one part. For the first time, folks back home could get reports on distant battles in not quite real time thanks to the telegraph with its wires running alongside rail lines. The president used the communication lines to guide troop movement and newspapers informed their readers. Images could not be sent by telegraph, but artists from the battlefields and camps could send their sketches north on trains and others would engrave the drawings onto wood for publications like Harpers Weekly. Sketch artists such as Englishman Alfred R. Waud imbedded with the troops and could capture the war from a soldier’s eye, rather than from a commander’s view. The infantrymen’s fatigue and fear show in the postures of the men in the foreground. Smoke obscures the battle line, a representation of their unknown fate in this battle.