# Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter > Alexander Gardner - Early July 1863 (Encyclopedia Virginia gives July 6, 1863; other sources give only 'July 1863, after the Confederate retreat began July 4'); first published 1866 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/alexander-gardner/gardner-home-of-a-rebel-sharpshooter/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-13 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Alexander Gardner - **Date:** Early July 1863 (Encyclopedia Virginia gives July 6, 1863; other sources give only 'July 1863, after the Confederate retreat began July 4'); first published 1866 - **Medium:** Albumen silver print from a wet collodion glass-plate negative, mounted on card - **Dimensions:** Varies by surviving print; no single dimension is published for the anchor Library of Congress digitization (LC-DIG-ppmsca-12562). A different Library of Congress print of the same view (LCCN 91732531) is recorded at 6 5/8 x 9 in (image), 11 x 14 in (mount). The companion stereograph negative (LC-DIG-cwpb-00069) is a 4 x 10 in wet-collodion glass stereo negative per Library of Congress format data; this figure was retrieved through automated search rather than a directly fetched catalogue page and should be re-verified against loc.gov before being treated as final. - **Object type:** Photograph - **Period:** American, Civil War era, nineteenth century - **Current location:** Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. - **Attribution:** disputed ## Summary A dead Confederate soldier lies inside a stone sniper's nest at Devil's Den, Gettysburg, in a photograph Alexander Gardner's team made in July 1863 and published as Plate 41 of Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War in 1866. Gardner's caption presented it as a chance discovery of a rebel sharpshooter's post. It was not. The same corpse appears in a second Gardner photograph, "A Sharpshooter's Last Sleep," lying in its original, more exposed position roughly forty to seventy-two yards away; historian William Frassanito demonstrated in 1975 that Gardner's team moved the body into the more picturesque rock enclosure and propped an ordinary infantry rifle, not a sharpshooter's weapon, beside it.The manipulation went unremarked in print for nearly a century, noticed only in a brief 1961 magazine article before Frassanito's book-length documentation. Camera credit for the image is itself disputed between Gardner, who claimed it in his own Sketch Book, and Timothy O'Sullivan, credited in Gardner's own earlier 1863 sales catalogue and by Frassanito's research. The soldier's identity has never been confirmed; the most recent proposed identification, of a Georgia infantryman named John Rutherford Ash, rests on a claimed photographic resemblance and remains speculative.The negative is held today by the Library of Congress as part of a collection whose documented custody runs through E. and H. T. Anthony and Company, the collectors Rand and Ordway, dealer John C. Taylor and publisher Edward Bailey Eaton before the Library's 1943 purchase; a separate period print survives independently in the National Archives under War Department custody. This is among the earliest documented instances of staging in war photography, and its own attribution and custodial history are almost as unsettled as the scene it depicts. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **July 1863** Alexander Gardner's Washington, D.C. photographic studio `[documented]` (origin) Negative(s) exposed at Devil's Den, Gettysburg, by Gardner's field team days after the battle, under the studio's imprint. Gardner's own September 1863 sales catalogue offered the image within two months of the battle, crediting Timothy O'Sullivan as cameraman. - **1863-1866** Alexander Gardner's studio `[documented]` (publication) Published as Plate 41, with a companion image as Plate 40, in Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Philp and Solomons, 1865-66), each an original tipped-in albumen print. Gardner's own caption for Plate 41 credits himself, not O'Sullivan, as photographer, and constructs a discovery narrative for the scene that his own team had staged. - **1866-1943** E. and H. T. Anthony and Company, then Col. Arnold A. Rand and Gen. Albert Ordway (from 1879), then John C. Taylor, then Edward Bailey Eaton (from 1907) `[documented]` (gap and transfer) This is the Library of Congress's own documented history for the Civil War glass-negative collection as a whole, which it states included roughly 2,000 negatives by Gardner's team. The chain is not confirmed item by item for this specific negative; the Library's own background essay states that after six changes of ownership it remains uncertain exactly which images passed through which hands. - **1943-present** Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division `[documented]` (acquisition) The Library purchased the collection in 1943, acquiring approximately 7,500 original glass-plate negatives and about 2,500 further glass and film copy negatives, after the collection had spent 1916 to 1943 in storage. This negative and its related prints are catalogued within that acquisition. - **unknown-present** United States War Department, now National Archives at College Park `[documented]` (parallel holding) A separate period print of the same staged scene is held by the National Archives (Identifier 533315, War and Conflict Number 254), credited to the War Department rather than to the Anthony-Rand-Ordway-Taylor-Eaton chain. The date and mechanism of this print's entry into War Department custody is not documented in the sources consulted. ## Open questions - Which operator, Gardner, Timothy O'Sullivan, or James Gibson, actually exposed this negative? Gardner's own 1866 caption, his own 1863 sales catalogue, Frassanito's research and the Gettysburg National Military Park's 2014 review do not agree. - Who was the soldier? No proposed identification, including the most recent Ash proposal, is confirmed; the strongest evidence offered for any candidate is facial resemblance in a period photograph, which is not conclusive. - Exactly how far was the body moved, forty yards per Frassanito's 1975 estimate or seventy-two yards per his own 1995 revision? Both figures still circulate in secondary sources. - What is the precise custodial path of this specific negative between Gardner's Washington gallery and its documented entry into the Rand-Ordway-Taylor-Eaton chain that the Library of Congress purchased in 1943? The chain is documented for the collection as a whole, not confirmed item by item for this negative. - When and how did the National Archives' separate print (Identifier 533315, War and Conflict Number 254) enter federal custody, and is it a direct copy of the Library of Congress negative or a separately sourced print? - Was the staging discussed at all publicly between the 1866 publication and Frederic Ray's 1961 magazine note, or did it go entirely unremarked in print for nearly a century? No source consulted for this record documents any intervening public discussion. ## Sources - [1] Library of Congress, 'Home of a Rebel sharpshooter / Alex. Gardner, photographer.' (catalog record, item 2012647605). - [2] Library of Congress, 'Home of a rebel sharpshooter / Alex. Gardner, photographer. - digital file from original photograph' (LC-DIG-ppmsca-12562). - [3] Library of Congress, 'A sharpshooter's last sleep, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania / Alex. Gardner, photographer.' (item 2006692501). - [4] Library of Congress, 'The home of a rebel sharpshooter, on battle field of Gettysburg - digital file from original neg.' (LC-DIG-cwpb-00069). - [5] Library of Congress, 'The Case of the Moved Body,' Does the Camera Ever Lie?, Civil War Glass Negatives and Related Prints, Articles and Essays. - [6] Library of Congress, 'Battle-field of Gettysburg--Dead Confederate sharpshooter at foot of Little Round Top [i.e., Devil's Den]' (item 91732531). - [7] Library of Congress, Civil War Glass Negatives and Related Prints, About This Collection (Anthony-Taylor-Rand-Ordway-Eaton provenance history). - [8] Wikipedia, 'Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter.' Flagged as a tertiary source consolidating Frassanito's findings and publication history; replace with Frassanito's own 'Gettysburg: A Journey in Time' (1975) and 'Early Photography at Gettysburg' (1995) directly where possible. - [9] Wikipedia, 'Alexander Gardner (photographer).' Tertiary source for the biography; flagged for replacement with a scholarly biography (e.g. the Library of Congress's own Gardner materials or a published monograph) where possible. - [10] HistoryNet, 'Behind the Barricade: The Devil's Den 'sharpshooter' identity revealed.' - [11] Gettysburg National Military Park Blog, '"The Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter" Revisited, Part 1.' - [12] Gettysburg National Military Park Blog, '"The Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter" Revisited, Part II.' - [13] Encyclopedia Virginia, 'Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg, July, 1863.' - [14] American Battlefield Trust, 'The Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg' (reproduces Gardner's original published caption). - [15] National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, 'Plate 41. Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, Battle-field of Gettysburg.' - [16] National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, 'Plate 40. A Sharpshooter's Last Sleep, on Battle-field of Gettysburg.' - [17] Hoaxes.org, 'A Sharpshooter's Last Sleep' (Photo Database). - [18] CUNY Graduate Center, Visual Culture of the American Civil War, 'Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg.' - [19] Wikimedia Commons, File:Pennsylvania, Gettysburg. The Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter - NARA - 533315.jpg (file description page, National Archives Identifier 533315). - [20] Wikimedia Commons, File:Battle-field of Gettysburg-Dead Confederate sharpshooter at foot of Little Round Top (i.e., Devil's Den) LCCN91732531.jpg (file description page). --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.