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| At the sutler's store: a lifelike group A high degree of artistic feeling and skill was shown by the war photographer who preserved this band of joking soldiers beside a sutler's store. Few photographic feats are as difficult, even to-day, as the successful portraying of such a number of different subjects, in poses so remarkably diversified, and under such abrupt color contrasts of light and shadow. Evidently, the army was in a permanent Camp when this picture was taken; for it was then that the sutlers would open up their stocks of canned goods, soft drinks, playing cards, handkerchiefs, paper collars, and such luxuries, enjoyed by the boys of 1861 only at infrequent intervals. Sometimes the soldiers rebelled against the storekeeper's extortionate prices, and once in a while, on the eve of a forward movement, they would sack the little shanty of its contents by way of reprisal. |
