One of the Union army's best known and most respected soldiers, Brigadier General Phil Kearney led his division into fierce, sometimes hand-to-hand combat at the battle of White Oak Swamp, near the end of the 1862 Peninsula Campaign. As the battle raged into the night, with Union forces finally holding against the Confederate assault, special artist Alfred Waud (pronounced Wode) braved danger to sketch the event.

A leading member of a distinctive band of artist/reporters/adventurers who covered the war, Waud was on of the few Civil War artists who carried a pistol as he moved close to the action to ensure that his sketches were accurate. He felt very much a part of the army he covered. Five days after this battle--the sixth day of what became knows as the Seven Days--he wrote a friend: "...against immense odds this gallant Army has fought like heroes....Only think of it, seven days almost without food or sleep, night and day being attacked by overwhelming masses of infuriated rebels, thundering at us from all sides....So dogged have our men fought that the enemies [sic] loss foots up to a much higher figure than ours."

Above caption written by Margaret Wagner, Publishing Division, Library of Congress

The first photograph published in an American newspaper appeared in the Daily Graphic on March 4, 1880. Before that time it was common practice for American editors to enlist artists to sketch and report on news events, from steamboat explosions to the battles of the Civil War.

One of the most prolific and skilled of these artists was Alfred Waud. He and his brother William, also an artist, were born in London England and emigrated to the United States in 1850. Alfred Waud produced illustrations for various publications in Boston and New York during the 1850s, including work for Barnum and Beach's Illustrated Weekly. With the outbreak of the war in 1861, three leading illustrated weeklies, Harper's Weekly, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper and the New York Illustrated News dispatched out their " Special Artists" and "Special Correspondents" to cover the war fronts. Alfred Waud, Esq., one of the most talented artists, proceeded to Washington to accompany the army through the campaign.

Waud was one of the most prolific and talented of the artists assigned to the field by the editors of Harper's Weekly magazine. More than eleven hundred sketches by Waud are among the Library's collection of Civil War documents.

Medium : 1 drawing on tan paper : pencil and Chinese white

Created/Published : June 30, 1862

Creator : Alfred Rudolph Waud, artist, 1828-1891

Part of the Civil War Drawing Collection housed in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress

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Product #: cph3g05823