Prisoners from the Front, by Winslow Homer (1866), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY
I had planned to write this blog entry last month, but the galleys arrived near the end of that month for the book connected with the entry--Lee Besieged: Grant's Second Petersburg Offensive, June 18-July 1, 1864. The book is due out in spring 2025 and I'm still working on the galleys.
Before my publisher Savas Beatie did its vastly superior job on the dust jacket, I had intended to use Winslow Homer's Prisoners from the Front in the dust jacket. Homer sometimes served as an aide to his friend, Brig. Gen. Francis Channing Barlow, a New York lawyer educated at Harvard. Circumstantial evidence indicates that Homer accompanied Barlow during Barlow's misadventures during the battle of Jerusalem Plank Road, June 21-24, 1864.
Barlow was a very brave but unlucky general. After the war, he demonstrated that he was a great lawyer. He helped clean up the New York bar, which at the time was notoriously corrupt. He also proved to honest for the Grant Administration. Barlow, though a Republican, supported the Democrat vote count in Florida during the contentious aftermath of the 1876 presidential election. He was New York's Attorney General at the time but soon withdrew to private practice.
The painting depicts Barlow confronting prisoners on what in my opinion is June 21, 1864. Barlow looks down on them imperiously. The only thing that indicates that the prisoners and not Barlow won the fight of June 21 is the cocky attitude of the Rebel closest to Barlow. My idea was thus a little too arch and plainly too static, compared to the excellent dust jacked produced by Savas Beatie.
I like to start my presentation on the Wilson-Kautz Raid (June 22-July 1, 1864), with an amusing though possibly apocryphal story about Prisoners from the Front because of its connection with the raid. The Confederate cavalry that halted Barlow's vaunted division on June 21 belonged to Barringer's North Carolina Cavalry Brigade, which played a very significant role in the Southern response to the Wilson-Kautz Raid.
That allows me to observe that Homer posed Barlow to resemble Washington crossing the Delaware in an earlier painting by another artist. But Barlow was a scrawny fellow. To make the image of him in the picture more imposing, Homer reportedly painted Barlow's head atop the more robust body of Brig. Gen. Nelson A. Miles, one of Barlow's subordinates in June 1864.
After Savas Beatie produced the more dynamic dust jacket below, Prisoners from the Front declined to a mere illustration within the book.
