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Then & now photos from the Civil War
The Guardian ^ | 8/7/2015

Posted on 08/09/2015 7:31:06 PM PDT by Altura Ct.

Very cool then & now photo shoot.

The women who dug the graves, the kids who watched the largest battle in US history – and the slaves forced to help fighters at the front. 150 years after the last shots were fired, Guardian photographer David Levene travelled across the US photographing the sites scarred by the American civil war.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/ng-interactive/2015/jun/22/american-civil-war-photography-interactive

(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: abrahamlincoln; civilwar; davidlevene; godsgravesglyphs; greatestpresident; photography; thecivilwar; thenandnow
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To: PROCON

This is absolutely spectacular. Thanks for posting.


21 posted on 08/09/2015 8:22:10 PM PDT by bigdaddy45
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To: Altura Ct.
620,000 dead, cities in ruin ... the civil war decimated the United States.

Reparations = PAID IN FULL.

22 posted on 08/09/2015 8:26:43 PM PDT by Oatka (This is America. Assimilate or evaporate. [URL=http://media.photobucket.com/user/currencyjunkie/me)
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To: Altura Ct.

Thanks! Well-done pictorial!


23 posted on 08/09/2015 8:30:37 PM PDT by W. (Get a rope. Now.)
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To: wardaddy; Impy; GOPsterinMA; Clintonfatigued; AuH2ORepublican; sickoflibs; BillyBoy

*ping of interest*


24 posted on 08/09/2015 8:34:29 PM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (Resist We Much)
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To: Altura Ct.

Thanks for posting this...


25 posted on 08/09/2015 8:40:02 PM PDT by GOPJ (Research facilities don't use a million aborted babies every year. Numbers don't add up..)
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To: fieldmarshaldj; GOPsterinMA; BillyBoy

Very cool.

I’d like to put those gallows in DC back up.


26 posted on 08/09/2015 8:44:46 PM PDT by Impy (They pull a knife, you pull a gun. That's the CHICAGO WAY, and that's how you beat the rats!)
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To: Altura Ct.

Anyone notice there are usually at least as many, and usually more trees now than in the past?


27 posted on 08/09/2015 8:50:28 PM PDT by Vince Ferrer
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To: Altura Ct.

Great pics. Thanks!


28 posted on 08/09/2015 8:58:39 PM PDT by BerryDingle (I know how to deal with communists, I still wear their scars on my back from Hollywood-Ronald Reagan)
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To: kalee

Placemarker


29 posted on 08/09/2015 9:08:44 PM PDT by kalee
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To: Beowulf9
I know it sounds crazy, but I think he was taken over or something by a civil war guy, who might’ve been on the other side of the battle but put up in the hospital, and a fight was started between two men.

Did he actually use the word "bathroom?" Because no Civil War-era soldier would have used that word to describe a "privy."

Regards,

30 posted on 08/09/2015 9:09:26 PM PDT by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
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To: stylecouncilor

...ping....

Ford’s Theater.


31 posted on 08/09/2015 9:16:23 PM PDT by onedoug
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To: Altura Ct.

Amazing!


32 posted on 08/09/2015 9:20:10 PM PDT by Vendome (Don't take life so seriously-you won't live through it anyway-Enjoy Yourself ala Louis Prima)
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To: Beowulf9

I believe in ghosts. I once lived in a house that was haunted. And, by the way, ghosts are mentioned throughout the Bible.


33 posted on 08/09/2015 9:37:07 PM PDT by VerySadAmerican (Since you're so much smarter than me, don't waste your time insulting me. I won't understand it.)
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To: Vince Ferrer

Yep. Missouri’s forested Ozarks were stripped, the hills made bald, for railroad ties and bridge pilings. All my old family pics from what is now heavily forested hills in that area show the land as bare of trees as an Illinois cornfield.

And I suppose before more efficient mined coal was common, both trains and steamboats used a lot of wood.

In the Civil War, was so scarce in some areas that the armies made ample use of the fencing the farmers had worked hard to set up ... as firewood. And every other scrap of wood the tired, wet and cold men could get with as little effort as possible. Fences were well-seasoned hardwood and burned hot.

In early America the land’s fertility was judged by the trees- it was thought [erroneously] that trees meant fertility was high while grass meant fertility was poor. Until the metal plow surpassed the old wood plow, tilling prairie was harder than slashing and burning trees. Plus you needed wood anyway for making your house, fencing, barns, stables, privies, mills, bridges, wood pulp paper, wagons, barrels, crates, boats, for heating, for cooking food, for boiling salty spring water to get salt, for boiling sorghum for molasses, for boiling fat and lye to make soap, etc, for making charcoal for gunpowder, and when the railroads were created, for one heck of a lot of railroad ties. And they were unaware of the problems of erosion by wind or water so they stripped the trees in every nook and cranny to make more room for crops or grass for livestock.

European visitors made note of the sheer abundance of fine wood fencing in America.

But that ended with the civil war as both Armies burned up every stitch of dry wood fencing they could find. Maybe that and expansion into the more arid grassy west spurred the need for alternatives like barbed wire.


34 posted on 08/09/2015 10:24:07 PM PDT by piasa (Attitude adjustments offered here free of charge)
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To: Altura Ct.

Thank you for the link. Very sad and informative.
Ulysses Grant: “War is hell.”


35 posted on 08/09/2015 10:32:20 PM PDT by Falconspeed ("Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others." Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94))
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To: piasa

Very good posting about use of wood back then.


36 posted on 08/09/2015 10:50:13 PM PDT by octex
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To: piasa
Wood was so heavily used during this period, with the railroads the chief culprits, and cooking being second, that at one point railroad managers set out to calculate how much wood was being used. They estimated that by 1900 there would be no trees left in America. They began a crash program of conservation, which included switching to coal, and finding ways of preserving railroad ties better.

Everyone has forgotten this, but it is important to remember. First, it was the railroads that figured out the issue and addressed the problem. Secondly, people didn't want to just burn everything down before the 1960's hippies came around and enlightened us. They wanted a clean environment as much as anyone else. And finally, the problem is that they were using renewable resources, and solved the problem by switching to fossil fuels. The reason there are so many trees in America today is for two reasons. One, the railroads switched to coal. and two everyone else switched from horses to cars. This saved farmland used for hay, and mechanized farms were so productive we could let land return to trees.

For a couple of summers I would go to my local library to the history collections and make copies of old photographs, and go find the exact spot and take another photograph. Almost invariably there were more trees today. Environmentalists would like to keep this covered up, but the truth is out there in old photographs.

37 posted on 08/09/2015 10:56:02 PM PDT by Vince Ferrer
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To: Altura Ct.

“620,000 dead, cities in ruin ... “

620,000 dead out of a population of roughly 30,000,000. Devastating indeed


38 posted on 08/09/2015 10:56:59 PM PDT by Figment
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To: Altura Ct.

bmp


39 posted on 08/09/2015 11:10:26 PM PDT by gattaca (Republicans believe every day is July 4, democrats believe every day is April 15. Ronald Reagan)
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To: Altura Ct.

We never had a civil war. USA didn’t exist until the Obama descended from the heavens. History must never offend anyone. Unless it’s Bush’s fault.


40 posted on 08/10/2015 12:30:32 AM PDT by Organic Panic
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