Private Samuel Shoop, Company F, 200th Pennsylvania Infantry

Reed Brockway Bontecou

April–May 1865 · Albumen silver print from glass negative · Photographs

The last great battle of the Civil War was the siege of Petersburg, Virginia—a brutal campaign that led to Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender on April 9, 1865. Samuel Shoop, a twenty-five-year-old private in Company F of the 200th Pennsylvania Volunteers, received a gunshot wound in the thigh at Fort Steadman on the first day of the campaign (March 25) and was evacuated to Harewood Hospital in Washington, D.C. His leg was amputated by Dr. Reed Brockway Bontecou, surgeon in charge, who also made this clinical photograph. It was intended, in part, to serve as a tool for teaching fellow army surgeons and is an extremely rare example of the early professional use of photography in America.

Artist

Reed Brockway Bontecou

Date

April–May 1865

Medium

Albumen silver print from glass negative

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Gift of Stanley B. Burns, M.D. and The Burns Archive, 1992