[War Widow]

Death was ever present and ever visible for 19th-century Americans and, in particular, for those who lived through the Civil War. This woman’s elaborate costume with lace, beadwork, and trim, indicates that she is in mourning, and the framed photograph of a soldier at her side—likely a husband or son—suggests the object of her sorrow. For the first time, photography offered some small degree of immortality to the general public, allowing people to leave behind a record of their faces for future generations, to “secure the shadow ’ere the substance fade.”