War Views: Dutch Gap Canal and Group of Soldiers,

ca. 1861–65

<p>Published by E. &amp; H. T. Anthony &amp; Co., one of the largest suppliers and distributors of photographic supplies in the United States during the nineteenth century, this stereoscopic view represents the Union’s effort in 1864 to widen a small seventeenth-century canal in the James River of Chesterfield County, Virginia. Meant to be viewed through a stereoscopic device to enhance the three-dimensional effect of the landscape, images like this were widely circulated and collected.</p><p>In this photograph, nine men stand on the canal bank; most look toward the camera, and one stands closer to the edge, pulling a rope that leads out of the frame. Dressed in uniform, this man could be a soldier in the United States Colored Troops, a group of regiments consisting of non-white soldiers within the Union Army. The back of the card reads, “Taken after the bank was blown out. On the extreme end a portion of the bank remains, which forms a profile, which the soldiers call Jeff. Davis”—a reference to Jefferson Davis, president of the secessionist Confederate States of America during the Civil War.<br></p>