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Papers document Poe's military schooling and Civil War engineering work mostly with correspondence, military orders, reports, maps, and sketches.

Poe’s papers document his military schooling and Civil War work. Correspondence, orders, reports, muster rolls, and maps document both his engineering work and that of the engineers and mechanics he commanded. Correspondence and reports from November and December1864 and early 1865 detail the work of Poe’s engineers in the destruction of Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia, which they razed and destroyed on General William T. Sherman’s orders. Poe invented a battering ram on a chain attached to a large sawhorse with which the army destroyed brick buildings. Poe’s engineers were also responsible for the wholesale destruction of local railroads and buildings, which were used by Confederates to fight Union forces. His men also built fortifications. There are numerous correspondence (reports) and morning reports from the First Regiment Michigan Engineers and Mechanics, and muster rolls of the Engineer Battalion Twenty-third Army Corps. An 1851 receipt is signed by U.S. Grant. Undated materials found originally within dated correspondence and report folders were retained within those folders. The collection is organized by size, alphabetically by topic, and chronologically. The physical state of items in the collection varies widely from good to bad. Many items are faded, fragile, soiled, acidic, and the majority of the oversized materials are in multiple pieces with edge damage, extremely acidic, and brittle.

Researchers may be interested in knowing that the collection has a set of item-level index cards. Also, part of the Correspondence, March-December 1863, has been microfilmed (See Micro Accession # 429). The bulk of Poe’s papers are housed in the Library of Congress, see finding aid at http://rs5.loc.gov/service/mss/eadxmlmss.old/eadpdfmss/uploaded_pdf/ead_pdf_batch_17_July_2009/ms008037.pdf. Also, the University of Louisville Kentucky Special Collections has Poe images and maps, see https://archivescatalog.library.louisville.edu/repositories/2/accessions/6224.

This volume is a published collection of photographic prints of battlegrounds, ruins, works, and other scenes from the America Civil War in Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina. The photographs were taken between the spring of 1864 and the spring of 1866. Along with the published photographs of Mathew Brady, and Alexander Gardner's Photographic sketchbook, Barnard's Views of Sherman's campaign is one of the main photographic monuments of the Civil War, containing some of the most famous images of the war's destruction.

Photographic Views of the Sherman Campaign (41cm x 51cm) is a collection of 57 photographic prints published in New York by Wynkoop & Hallenbeck in 1866. An abbreviated title is stamped in gold on the album's brown leather cover and the full title is printed on the first page. Clements Library's copy is imperfect: four plates lacking; one missing plate, acquired separately, is shelved at: Photo Div F.20.1. Inscriptions indicate that this copy was presented by Edward Hoffmire to John M. Hoffmire, his brother, in 1868, and John M. Hoffmire later gave it to his daughter Emma on April 15, 1916.

Each print is labeled with the location of the photograph, often including the names of natural and manmade landmarks. Some areas are represented in multiple images, though each item provides a unique view of landscapes and urbanized areas in Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina. Many show evidence of military activity, including soldiers, tents and camps, earthworks and trenches, blasted trees, destroyed railroads and buildings. One item is a group portrait of William Tecumseh Sherman and seven other Union generals. See the list of photographs in Additional Descriptive Data for more information about specific locales pictured.