Photographs of Women During the Civil War: Selected Images

Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., 20540-4730

Scope and Arrangement of the List, Reproduction and Rights Information

Scope and Arrangement of the List

This reference aid lists photographs in the Prints & Photographs Division's holdings that include women during the Civil War. The following holdings have been tapped in compiling the reference aid:

• Civil War Negatives - The digitized negatives have been surveyed comprehensively for images of women. For more information about the Civil War Negatives, see: The Civil War Negatives: Arrangement and Online Access
• Civil War Photograph LOTs - The photographic prints arranged by subject matter into LOTs (groups) have not been surveyed comprehensively for images that include women; the list cites only selected images that were included in an earlier version of the list.
• Biographical File - Photographic prints from the division's file of images relating to individuals; the list includes selected images of individuals who were included in an earlier version of the list.

Some images included in this list overlap other online reference aids, including: Photographs of African Americans During the Civil War and Images of African-American Slavery and Freedom.

The list is divided into two sections, in an effort to supply the images in the manner they have frequently been requested:

• African American Women
• White Women

While images of African Americans are frequently requested, it should be noted that the identification of racial or ethnic characteristics of people in a photograph on visual evidence alone is risky, if not impossible. The grouping of the images into the above categories is based solely on what can be discerned in the images and not on background research. When an image includes both women who appear to be African American and women who appear to be white, the image is listed in both groupings.

Within each section, the images are arranged so that those in which women appear most prominently display first.

Reproductions and Rights

Digital images are included whenever they are available for items in the list. The images link to the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog where larger versions of the image are available. One way to obtain a copy of an image is by downloading one of the larger versions (jpeg or tiff) from the catalog. The images vary in quality and resolution. In general the Civil War glass negatives were scanned at a high resolution sufficient for most publication purposes.

The entries in the list also cite reproduction numbers used for ordering quality copies from the Library of Congress Photoduplication Service.

There are no known restrictions on publication of images included in this list.