I'm sort of a Civil War buff and I read a book about various battles from time to time (when I get a chance) and I've seen almost all pictures taken of the Civil War in these books. However, it is a proven fact that no pictures were taken during a battle, just after, and chances are, it would show the carnage that a certain battle produced. War is hell - and it is sad to look at these pictures of men laying dead, by the dozens, in one spot of the battlefield.

There is a part of me that wished, no matter how awful the battle was, to see snapshots during a battle. That would be pretty interesting. Back then, they always took pictures of the dead after the battle, but never during the battle. The reason - soldiers moved obviously, and the cameras at that time had a slow shutter speed, and if people were moving while a picture was taken, then it would turn out being very blurry.

Still though, forget about digital technology, think of the cameras twenty years ago, where you aimed the camera and shot, cameras were able to pick up people in motion. If the cameramen of the Civil War era had even this type of technology, can you imagine how much today's historians could really learned what happened during these civil war battles. They could take these photos to a PHOTO SCANNING SERVICE that could DIGITIZE OLD PHOTOS. That would be amazing.

However, we have to be thankful for what we had. The cameramen back then were on the cutting edge of technology when it came to taking photos. In fact, the pictures they produced were the first of their kind. So no matter how horrible the subject within the photos were, the civil war cameramen showed the American public and also generations to come, how awful war was, lest we forget.