Website of the Week

Cartes de Visite Album of John Hay (Diplomat, Politician, and Personal Secretary to President Abraham Lincoln)
http://tinyurl.com/3tbjtlb
Review by Diane Gustafson, SWC Library Faculty

We are observing the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. I have been reading even more than usual on the subject and came across this great website.

Cartes de visite, or visiting cards, originated in France. When you went to visit, you presented your card to the butler before being ushered into the drawing room. If the person weren’t home, you could write a short note (“Sorry I missed you”) on the back.

The practice spread to the U.S., and the great photographer Mathew Brady took many of the photographs for the cartes de visite in this collection. I think it is amusing that people began to collect these cards, much as we as children collected baseball cards, and would send the cards they had bought to the famous person asking for an autograph. This is true of the visiting card of my all-time favorite Civil War general, James Longstreet; see the message on the back of his card.

I knew what many of these people looked like, but there were a few surprises. John Charles Fremont isn’t nearly as handsome as the actors who have portrayed him. I also would not have recognized Charles Sumner or Alfred Terry.

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