(CIVIL WAR)

Contemporary half brown embossed leather, some wear, original clasps. Approx. 60 CDV portraits, about half albumen prints and the remainder engravings, presented in diecut windows (a few tears), two per page.

This important Civil War album includes carte-de-visite photographs signed by the following Union Army officers: Winfield Scott, Robert Anderson (commander at Fort Sumter), Joseph Hooker, George McClellan, Fitz John Porter, and the French royal brothers who volunteered for the cause, Louis Philippe, comte de Paris, Robert d'Orleans, Duke of Chartres.

The album includes an outstanding run of signed signed portraits of key members of Lincoln's cabinet: William Seward, Gideon Welles, Simon Cameron, and Montgomery Blair. The influential owner of the album, William Tilden Blodgett (see Provenance below), was well-positioned to obtain signed portraits from these leading men.

Unsigned CDVs include Ambrose Burnside, David Farragut, Salmon Chase,
Edwin Stanton, and many others. The portraits in the album are by Mathew Brady and other leading photographers of the Civil War.

Provenance: William Tilden Blodgett (1823-1875). One of the leading New Yorkers of his day, Blodgett was co-founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and helped to found the American Museum of Natural History. A wealthy industrialist and ardent abolitionist and reformer, he was a charter member the Union League Club and a financial backer of the Union cause. Blodgett was acquainted with many of the leading men of the day.