[Timothy O'Sullivan (ca 1840-1882), photographer]. Fugitive Negroes Fording Rappahannock. From "Brady's Album Gallery" No. 518. Outdoor albumen gallery card. Washington, D.C.: Mathew Brady, [19 August] 1862. Copyright statement to mount verso. Title and series title printed and affixed to mount verso. 

Five formerly enslaved African Americans with a laden ox cart ford the shallow water of the Rappahannock at a crossing called Cow's Ford near the Orange and Alexandria Railroad Bridge. 

The image and at least 6 others were taken by Irish-born photographer Timothy O'Sullivan, an employee of Alexander Gardner and Mathew Brady. Taken in August 1862 in the aftermath of General Pope's crushing defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), O'Sullivan captured the mass exodus of both Union soldiers and the formerly enslaved fleeing North. 

Historian John Hennessy wrote of the image: "It was a scene repeated thousands of times that summer...slaves on a profound but uncertain journey into freedom, into a world that, in 1862, was hardly prepared to receive them... The scene captures not the posed and tidied up aftermath of emancipation, but rather freedom in progress, unpolished, uncertain." (Hennessy, "A profound and ubiquitous image: slaves crossing the Rappahannock". Fredericksburg Remembered. 21 October 2010). 

[Civil War, Union, Confederate] [African Americana, African American History, Black History, Slavery, Enslavement, Abolition, Emancipation] [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]