The collection consists of 100 (23 x 17.7 cm) albumen prints in two volumes (both 42.5 x 33 cm). Each volume has a brown leather cover with brass clasps. Both volumes contain 50 mounted, consecutively-numbered albumen prints depicting the operations of the Army of the Potomac during and in the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War.
Every image is preceded by a paragraph of text describing the context and background of the photograph that follows. The photographs cover the period between March of 1862 and June of 1865. Readers should be aware that the photographs in the album are not arranged in an exact chronological sequence; many, but not all of the photographs have dates associated with them. The majority of the photographs depict sites in Virginia, but photographs from Maryland, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina are also present.
Alexander Gardner (1821-1882) immigrated to the United States in 1856, and began working as a photographer for Mathew Brady. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, Gardner was one of the many photographers that Brady sent into the field to visually document the war and its participants. Gardner went on to photograph many of the war's most famous battles, including Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and the siege of Petersburg.
After the war ended, with Brady's assistance Gardner founded his own gallery in Washington, D.C. He also published his famous Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War, carefully giving credit to the photographers whose negatives he used to make the prints for his book (perhaps in response to Brady's approach of publishing his employees' work under his own name).
Gardner died in Washington on December 10, 1882.
