Photographer

An Odd Little Man.

Union soldiers on the way to Bull Run in July 1861 were surprised to see following their column a small, bespectacled civilian with a goatee. He wore a long, white duster coat and a straw hat, and drove a black-curtained wagon. Not knowing what to make of the mysterious stranger, they shrugged him off and dubbed his odd-looking wagon the "Whatisit." This man was Mathew B. Brady, the leading portrait photographer of Washington, D.C.—one of his subjects had been President Abraham Lincoln. Brady was now about to try something that few had ever attempted: to record on film the actual sights of war. Swept up in the Federal retreat following Bull Run, Brady failed at his first effort. Nevertheless, he persisted and went on to form several photographic teams to cover the Civil War. Today the pictures taken...