American History: Premier Auction

Lot of 2 CDV illustrations depicting the bodies of Confederate soldiers outside of Battery Robinett in Corinth, Mississippi, following the Second Battle of Corinth, which took place October 3-4, 1862. Both with ink descriptions on verso, including one erroneously dated "Oct. 3rd & 4th 1864."

Both illustrations were made after battlefield photographs taken on October 5, 1862 by photographer Nicholas Brown of St. Louis, the first showing a group of Confederate casualties in front of the battery at Fort Robinett, including Colonel William P. Rogers of the 2nd Texas infantry (at left), who was killed in action after heroically retrieving and planting the fallen colors of the Second Texas, even leaping from his horse in the process, and Colonel W.H. Moore (to Rogers' right), who led a brigade of Missouri and Mississippi troops in futile assaults against Robinett; the second featuring another view of slain Confederate soldiers and horses, including Rogers' horse (at center) and Rogers' body (in background, at left). 

The photographs taken by Brown and used to create the illustrations featured here are described in Bob Zeller's The Blue and Gray in Black and White: A History of Civil War Photography as, "...the only known photographs of dead on the field of battle in the Western theater," and, perhaps more importantly, "...the only known photographs of dead Civil War soldiers in which bodies were positively identified at the time they were photographed."