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Andersonville Prison, Georgia. Representing the imprisonment of 33,000 Union Soldiers during the months of June, July and August, 1864…No. 1 North View.
Philadelphia: T[homas]. Sinclair’s lith., 311 Chestnut St., 1865. Lithograph, 14.5” x 20” plus title and margins, approximately 1” on top and sides and 2.5” at bottom. Printed signature of Anton Hohenstein in the lower-right corner of the image. CONDITION: Very good, light wear, some light toning and minor spotting. A scarce lithograph conveying the cramped, wretched conditions at the infamous Andersonville Prison, created during a period of Northern fascination with the arrest, trial, and execution of the camp’s commander Henry Wirz. This view shows 33,000 Union soldiers crammed into the stockade during the summer of 1864, along with associated structures and activities. In the foreground outside the principal stockade—and essentially positioned as the lead actor in the scene—is Capt. Wirz on horseback “taking a prisoner to the stocks.” A number of prisoners labor inside the stockade, and near the rebel sutlers tent—where a long line has formed—two stricken prisoners or corpses are being carried on stretchers. Numerous guard-posts are positioned along the top of the stockade walls. In the lower right a guard is shooting down at a prisoner who is falling with flailing arms. On the left side of the image, rebel soldiers march in a line near a “fort of six guns,” and a meat wagon approaches an open gate that leads to the stockade. A key in the title margin identifies eight features of the scene, including Capt. Wirz. Thomas Sinclair printed two views of Andersonville Prison: the present lithograph, showing the prison from the north, and “No. 2 South view.” According to a credit in the title margins of both prints, they are based on sketches by John Burns Walker of the 141st Pennsylvania Regiment, Co. G. However, the replicated signature of Anton Hohenstein, who was mainly known as a painter, appears in the present image, suggesting that he created a painting based on Walker’s untutored sketch (which can be seen here as pictured in a cdv) which served as the immediate source for the lithograph. While Hohenstein lived and worked in Philadelphia, none of the sources we’ve consulted indicate that he drew on stone for Sinclair. Officially designated as Camp Sumter and operating from February 1864 to April 1865, Andersonville held over 33,000 prisoners (the facility was designed to accommodate just 10,000) while its cemetery consisted of 12,000 graves (despite the actual death toll possibly being much higher). The largest and most inhumane of Civil War prison camps, it was notorious for its terrible living conditions, with no sanitation or shelter. By the summer of 1864, conditions at the prison had further deteriorated due to scant rations and lack of medical supplies. Vegetables were also scarce—leading to many cases of scurvy. Under the cruel Capt. Wirz, disease ran rampant, and starvation and senseless killings were commonplace. Such conditions ultimately led to Wirz’s public execution after he was captured, tried, and convicted upon the closure of the prison in 1865. Images of Andersonville remained popular in the North after the war as mementos of the war’s horrors and perceived examples of widespread Southern cruelty. Born in Scotland, Thomas S. Sinclair (ca. 1800–1881) was trained as a lithographer in Edinburgh and emigrated to Philadelphia around 1830. After working for Kennedy & Lucas, he bought the lithographic press of John Collins in 1838 and started his own business. After producing color plates throughout the 1840s and early ‘50s for a range of publications, he received an award in 1851 from the Franklin Institute for his color work. Sinclair became a major lithographer of advertising posters and sheet music covers in the 1850s and ‘60s. In 1873 John C. Sinclair joined the firm, which became known as T. Sinclair & Son. John ran the firm after Thomas’s death in 1881 and in 1889 the company was purchased by Harris & Son, the largest lithographer in Philadelphia at the time. Anton Hohenstein (1819–1869) was a German-born artist and painter who was primarily based in Philadelphia between 1855 and 1869. Hohenstein apprenticed as a lithographer in Germany and studied at the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. He arrived in Philadelphia in 1850 and worked primarily as a portrait painter before relocating to Alabama for a period. By 1860 he had returned to Philadelphia and sometime after 1865 changed his name to Anthony Hochstein. He died in Philadelphia in 1869. Soldier and artist John Burns Walker was captured by Confederates in Virginia in May of 1864 and imprisoned at Andersonville until the end of the war. Walker testified at the trial of Henry Wirz. OCLC records only one copy, at the American Antiquarian Society. Google searches locate another at the National Museum of American History. REFERENCES: Last, Jay. The Color Explosion : Nineteenth-Century American Lithography (Santa Ana, California, 2005), pp. 148–149; National Park Service. “Andersonville: Prisoner of War Camp (Teaching with Historic Places)” at National Park Service online; “Hohenstein, Anton” at the Library Company of Philadelphia online; “Andersonville Prison Georgia” at the National Museum of American History online.
Item #7676
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