The Source

Harper’s Weekly Index

By Michael K. Shaffer · Originally published January 2021 · p. 16

Sherman enters Savannah, courtesy Harper’s Weekly, January image at the beginning of this 14, 1865.

Harper’s Weekly Index [The first two paragraphs, edited from the February 2017 edition of this column, will set the stage for the index under study.] Visualizing the American Civil War’s key players and viewing battlefield maps allowed folks on the home front to maintain a closer connection with transpiring events. Illustrated newspapers, like Harper’s Weekly, offered images of many occurrences. Although the technology needed to reproduce photographs in newspapers did not yet exist, woodcuts, copied from pictures or sketches made by the various artists in the employ of many newspapers, brought the war to life. Thanks to the University of Pennsylvania, http://onlinebooks.librar y. upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=harpersweekly, researchers can access the wartime issues of Harper’s Weekly. One can search for terms or browse through pages of each edition, and users can download search results in various forms, including e-book formats. Thanks to the compilation of Richard A. Owens, An Index to the Illustrations of Harper’s Weekly During the

An Index to the Illustrations of Harper’s Weekly During the Civil War Years 1861-1865. ly locate images based on several criteria. In chronological order, Owens provides images segmented into 14 categories and covering the three theaters of war; these categories follow. 1. Front Cover Illustrations 2. Confederate Officers and Statesmen 3. Union Officers and Statesmen 4. President Lincoln 5. Maps 6. Naval Scenes 7. Local Scenes from Virginia & Maryland 8. Scenes from Washington, D.C. 9. War Scenes 10. Engravings & Scenes of Unique Interest 11. Local Scenes from States North & South 12. Sketches of Winslow Homer 13. Pictures by Mathew Brady 14. Sketches by Thomas Nast one sought an early-war image of, for example, the coast of Georgia, the search might begin in consulting Owens’s index of ‘Maps,’ and 1862. As the highlighted row indicates, the January 4, 1862 edition contained a “Bird’s Eye View of the Coast of Savannah, Georgia, to Beaufort, S.C., Showing the Position of the U.S. Fleet.” The article, “General Sherman’s Army Entering Savannah, Georgia, December 21, 1864, appeared on the cover of the January 14, 1865, Harper’s edition, thus indicating the need for researchers to deploy creative thought when exploring the Owens’s index. Remember the time required to get information from the battlefront to the press and adjust accordingly. This particular illustration appears below.

For a quick test-drive, examine the following scenario. If

Map of Georgia coast, courtesy Harper’s Weekly, January 4,

Visit WorldCat http://www. worldcat.org/ for help in finding this index in a local library. Used copies exist in the inventory of several online booksellers. Next month, we will explore other primary source materials. Continued good luck in researching the Civil War! Michael K. Shaffer is a Civil War historian, author, lecturer, and instructor, who remains a member of the Society of Civil War Historians, Historians of the Civil War Western Theater, and the Georgia Association of Historians. Readers may contact him at [email protected] or request speaking engagements via his website