New photography by Pat Cagney captured with a digital camera.

Front of "Slave Pen," Alexandria, Va.

Artist Andrew Joseph Russell (American, 1830-1902)

CultureAmerican

Dateunknown date

MediumAlbumen print

DimensionsOverall: 10 1/2 x 15 in. (26.7 x 38.1 cm)
Overall, Frame: 28 1/8 x 32 1/8 in. (71.4 x 81.6 cm)

Credit LineGift of David L. Hack and Museum purchase, with funds from Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., by exchange

Object number98.32.3

Collections

Photography

Not on view

DescriptionThe David L. Hack Civil War Photography Collection. This is a photograph of a brick building with seven windows and the words "Price, Birch & CO Dealers in Slaves" printed across the front. Four soldiers stand outside the building. One man is leaning against the doorframe, two others are sitting on a bench, while another stands off farther to the right with his gun at his side. Off to the left is a pile of wood and farther back a house or other building in the distance. The photo is also flanked with trees on both sides. This is from Alexander Gardner, _Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War_ (New York: Dover Publications, 1959 and 1972) (Hack Collection No. 36).

Label TextAndrew Joseph Russell American, 1830−1902 Front of “Slave Pen,” Alexandria, Va., 1863 Albumen print (photograph) Before the Civil War, this building in Alexandria, Va., housed one of the nation’s oldest and largest slave-trading firms. A mere seven miles from the White House, its proximity to Washington, D.C., infuriated abolitionists. The Union Army seized the notorious property in 1861 and converted it into a prison for captured Confederate soldiers. On April 16, 1862, President Lincoln liberated all enslaved people in the nation’s capital, and on January 1, 1863, his Emancipation Proclamation extended freedom to Virginia and the other rebel states. Gift of David L. Hack and Museum purchase, with funds from Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., by exchange 98.32.3 Exhibition History"History of Photography," Alice R. and Sol B. Frank Photography Galleries, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va, Fall, 2001. "Civil War Photographs from the David L. Hack Collection and Civil War Redux: Pinhole Photographs by Willie Anne Wright," Alice R. and Sol B. Frank Photo Galleries, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, February 3 - October 29, 2006; Cape Fear Museum, Wilmington, NC, February 15 - May 28, 2007; Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, WV, July 26 - September 21, 2008 "Shooting Lincoln: Photography and the 16th President," Chrysler Museum of Art, February 10 - July 5, 2015.Published ReferencesRoy Meredith, _The Face of Robert E. Lee in Life and in Legend_ (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1947), plate 70. _Mathew Brady's Illustrated History of the Civil War, 1861-65 and the Causes that Led Up to the Great Conflict_ ([s.l.]: Fairfax Press, 1912), 9.