E.B. & E.C. Kellogg, Hartford, Connecticut’s leading lithographers at the time of the Civil War, produced countless patriotic prints during the early years of the conflict. I’ve often wondered why they made fewer and fewer prints as the war dragged on. It seems likely that their customers were growing war-weary, and the increasingly bloody and horrific battles did not lend themselves to the heroic treatment that the Kelloggs favored. The Union victories at Gettysbury and Vicksburg at the beginning of July, 1863, inspired a handful of prints, including this one, which shows Union forces attempting to take advantage of a breach in the Rebel fortifications caused by the explosion of a mine, on June 26, 1863. Nine days later, on the “Glorious Fourth of July,” the Confederates finally surrendered.
inside the CHS 