Prewar photograph of Major John Pelham
Heritage Auctions (ha.com)
A Photo of “The Gallant Pelham” Earns Big
The Artifact
A prewar photograph of Major John Pelham
Condition
The image, a half plate ambrotype, is crystal clear and in pristine condition. The original double-hinged leather case is very good. The hinges were split long ago, the brass clasps bent over to allow the image to be viewed by opening it at the hinges rather than from the clasp side.
Details
In 1858, West Point cadet John Pelham, 20, visited Mathew Brady’s studio in New York to be photographed in uniform. In 1861, after the firing on Fort Sumter, Pelham, an Alabama native, resigned his West Point commission and headed south. In Virginia, he joined the army of Joseph E. Johnston as a lieutenant of artillery. Pelham’s competence in command soon caught the eye of the flamboyant Confederate cavalry commander J.E.B. Stuart, who made the young officer chief of his horse artillery. Over the next two years, Pelham saw action at the biggest battles in the war’s eastern theater, including Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. His exposed position at Fredericksburg, where his guns held up the Union army’s advance for hours, earned him the praise of Robert E. Lee, who, in his after-action report, commended the “gallant Pelham,” a nickname that stuck with the Alabamian. Three months later, at the Battle of Kelly’s Ford on March 17, 1863, a Union shell fragment struck Pelham in the head. He died the following day at 24. Stuart wrote of Pelham’s death, “The noble, the chivalric, the gallant Pelham is no more.… His loss to the country is irreparable.”
While Pelham’s cadet photo was reproduced many times in the ensuing years, the original (shown here) was long thought lost. It was kept by Pelham’s sister and passed down through her family before being put up for auction in 2010.
Quotable
A few days after the Confederate victory at the Battle of Bull Run, Pelham wrote to his father about his experience in combat. “I have seen what Romancers call glorious war. I have seen it in all its phases. I have heard the booming of cannon, and the more deadly rattle of musketry at a distance—I have heard it all nearby and have been under its destructive showers. I have seen men and horses fall thick and fast around me. I have seen our own men bloody and frightened flying before the enemy. I have seen them bravely charge the enemy’s lines and heard the shout of triumph as they carried the position. I have heard the agonizing shrieks of the wounded and dying … and seen the mangled forms of men and horses in frightful abundance…. All this I have witnessed and more, till my heart sickens; and war is not glorious as novelists would have us believe. It is only when we are in the heat and flush of battle that it is fascinating and interesting. It is only then that we enjoy it.”
Value
$41,825 (price realized at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas, in 2010). “Without question, this is the most important and visually moving Civil War photographic image we have ever had the opportunity to catalog,” a Heritage representative noted at the time.
