Poignant pioneers of photography: the American civil war - in pictures

President Abraham Lincoln with Allan Pinkerton (head of the US secret service) and Major General John A McClernand at the secret service department, headquarters of the army of the Potomac, near Antietam, Maryland on 4 October 1862
Photograph: Alexander Gardner

Corporal Hiram Warner, Company C, Second United States Sharp Shooters, 1861-62
Photograph: Unknown/The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Private Gid White, Company F, 108th Regiment, US Colored Infantry, January-May 1865
Photograph: Gayford & Speidel/Thomas Harris Collection

Young boy in Zouave outfit with drum, 1861-65. Zouave regiments on both sides of the civil war adopted the name and dress of French light infantry regiments in North Africa, which included short jackets, baggy trousers and oriental headwear
Photograph: George Smith Cook/Brian D Caplan Collection

Union Private John Parmenter under anaesthesia, 21 June 1865. The surgeon has just amputated the soldier's wounded foot to save his life
Photograph: Reed Brockway Bontecou/Collection Stanley B Burns, MD

Slave pen, Alexandria, Virginia, 1863. This picture was taken by AJ Russell, one of the few civil war photographers who was also a soldier. It shows a slave pen, which, before the slave trade was abolished, housed 300-400 people for sale
Photograph: Andrew Joseph Russell/The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Home of a rebel sharpshooter, Gettysburg, July 1863
Photograph: Unknown/Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sojourner Truth, 'I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance', 1864. Truth was an antislavery activist who used these photographs (of 'her shadow' or image) to raise money for many causes. She said: '[She] used to be sold for other people's benefit, now she sold herself for her own'
Photograph: Unknown/Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A burial party, Cold Harbour, Virginia, April 1865. A group of African American soldiers bury the dead
Photograph: John Reekie/Alexander Gardner/Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

Frances Clalin Clayton, 1864-66. Clayton was a woman who served in the Union army, disguised as a man
Photograph: Samuel Masury/Buck Zaidel Collection

A panorama of the ruins of Gallego Flour Mills, Richmond, 1865
Photograph: Alexander Gardner

American civil war-era enlistment posters and Matthew B Brady's studio camera and tripod from the 1860s in the Met exhibition Photograph: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images

Confederate Sergeant, Standing, with Large Bowie Knife and Rifle, 1861–65
Photograph: Unknown/Metropolitan Museum of Art/David Wynn Vaughan Collection

Private James House with Fighting Knife, Sixteenth Georgia Cavalry Battalion, Army of Tennessee, 1861–62(?)
Photograph: Unknown/Metropolitan Museum of Art/David Wynn Vaughan Collection

Confederate corporal seated in gothic revival chair, 1861-65
Photograph: Unknown/Metropolitan Museum of Art/David Wynn Vaughan Collection

Ruins of Mrs Henry's house, battlefield of Bull Run, March 1862
Photograph: George N. Barnard/Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

From left: An ambrotype of the headquarters for photographs, 1863, by Bonsall and Gibson; Private George M Harper, Company A Cutt's Battery, 11th Battalion, Georgia Volunteer Artillery, 1861-62, a sixth-plate ambrotype with applied colour by an unknown artist Photograph: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images

A maquette with albumen silver prints by Brady and Company with the text In Memory of Abraham Lincoln, 1865. The Lincoln portraits were taken by Matthew Brady and other photographers in his studio and assembled to honour the US president after he was assassinated in 1865 Photograph: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images