From bodies piled on battlefields to the execution of the conspirators in Abraham Lincoln's assassination, Alexander Gardner immortalized some of the darkest moments of the 1860s.

In 1851, a Scottish newspaperman named Alexander Gardner happened to attend the Great Exhibition at Hyde Park in London, where he saw a display of photographs by Mathew Brady. Inspired by what he’d seen, Gardner immigrated to the United States and found a job working as one of Brady’s photographers. When the Civil War broke out, Brady dispatched Gardner and others to record the conflict as it rapidly grew in scope.

Gardner’s photos became some of the most stirring of the Civil War. Not only did he capture the bloody aftermaths of battles like Antietam and Gettysburg, but he also took some of the best known phot

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