In mid-September 1862, the Civil War was only a year and a half old, and many Americans in the North and the South still clung to the view that this war was a noble, glorious, even romantic undertaking. That notion was shattered forever when Alexander Gardner and his assistant James Gibson, working for photographer Mathew Brady's firm, came to Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Md.
Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and George McClellan's Army of the Potomac had collided there in a battle that was, and remains, the nation's bloodiest day.