Union dead where General Reynolds fell, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July 1863

Union dead where General Reynolds fell, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July 1863. Albumen print of dead soldiers on the battlefield at Gettysburg, USA, by Alexander Gardener (1821-1882) from a negative by Timothy H O'Sullivan (1840-1882). The Battle of Gettysburg was the decisive battle of the American Civil War and one of the bloodiest, with over 50,000 men killed or wounded during three days of fighting. General Robert E Lee's Confederate army fought the Union army of the Potomac under General Meade for the first three days of July 1863. The Union army lost over 23,000 men, General John F Reynolds among them, and the Confederates as many as 28,000, marking the end of Lee's planned invasion of the north. Up to this time war had been portrayed as a series of heroic tableaux; these photographs revealed its realities for the first time. ©SSPL/National Media Museum