An original albumen carte-de-visite full-length studio portrait of an officer standing beside a tufted parlor chair, his left hand resting on the hilt of his foot officer's sword and his right hand tucked in a classic Napoleonic pose inside his coat. He is outfitted in a targeted, field-service frock coat with shoulder straps, an officer's belt with an eagle plate, and a cross-belt strap. The reverse bears the crisp, neat letterpress backmark for P. Tenney Gates, Plattsburgh, N.Y.

This card represents an absolute pinnacle of material culture and combat rarity, capturing Lieutenant Ephraim W. Hindes of Company F, 1st United States Sharp Shooters - the legendary green-clad marksmen. Raised primarily out of Vermont, Company F was an elite enclave of woodland riflemen who survived the rigorous marksmanship trials required to join Hiram Berdan's specialized brigade. Rather than traditional infantry tactics, the Sharp Shooters operated as elite skirmishers and countersnipers, armed with double-set trigger Christian Sharps breechloading rifles. The Plattsburgh, New York backmark on this mount neatly fits Hindes’s regional recruitment profile, just across Lake Champlain from his native Vermont origins.

Hindes and his fellow sharpshooters earned an immortalized chapter in military lore on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg. Deployed forward as a screening skirmish line in Pitzer’s Woods, a tiny detachment of fewer than 200 Berdan sharpshooters suddenly slammed into the massive advancing vanguard of Longstreet’s Confederate Corps. Fighting tenaciously from tree to tree, their rapid breechloader fire completely disrupted the Confederate alignment and delayed the assault on the Union left flank for critical hours.

Following this desperate screening action, elements of the 1st U.S.S.S. were rushed back into the chaotic vortex of the Peach Orchard to stem the southern breakthrough. It was during this blistering afternoon inferno that Lieutenant Hindes was struck down, severely wounded in action alongside a staggering percentage of his comrades. Surviving his severe Gettysburg wounds, Hindes returned to the unit, continuing his specialized service through the Overland Campaign.

Original photographs of documented members of Berdan's United States Sharp Shooters occupy the apex of desirability for advanced Civil War photography collectors. Because the unit was small, highly specialized, and suffered immense field attrition, authentic likenesses are notoriously difficult to obtain. The commercial gravity of this specific card is exponentially multiplied by Hindes's ironclad identity as a Gettysburg casualty on the pivotal afternoon of July 2.

[Photography, Early Photography, Historic Photography, Daguerreotypes, Ambrotypes, Tintypes, Cased Images, Union Cases, Albumen Photographs, CDVs, Carte de Visites, Cartes de Visite, Carte-de-visite, Cartes-de-visite, CDV, Cabinet Cards, Stereoviews, Stereocards, Stereographs] [Civil War, Union, Confederate]

Very good to fine. The albumen print exhibits excellent contrast. The mount is crisp and exceptionally clean, showing only the most nominal, uniform age-toning.