This collection consists of 193 Civil War era carte de visite photographs and one graphite sketch, all collected by Dr. Peter S. Arndt. Carte de visite (CDV) photographs are roughly two and one-half inches by four inches, about the size of a business card, and were very popular around the time of the Civil War. Many soldiers had their picture taken before going off to serve in the war and sent CDVs to their family and friends.
Arndt's CDV represents this aspect of it. The photograph shows him standing in Union uniform with sword and is signed “Dr. Arndt, Surgeon” on the front. There is also a graphite sketch of Arndt from the neck up. While he is full-bearded in the CDV, the sketch shows him clean-shaven save for a mustache. A collar, barely visible, indicates a dark suit that may or may not be a Union uniform.
The remaining CDVs represent another aspect of CDVs, that of collecting. Photograph studios sold sets of photographs of prominent civil and military leaders, which proved to be very popular among returning soldiers such as Arndt. The majority of Arndt's CDVs came from E. & H.T. Anthony studio in New York and were developed from the negatives of famed Civil War photographer Matthew Brady. They show all the famous generals of the war from both sides of the conflict, including Ulysses S. Grant, William Sherman, George McClellan, Robert E. Lee, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, and James Longstreet as well as lesser known officers like John Farnsworth, James Wadsworth, Howell Cobb, and Sterling Price. Confederate president Jefferson Davis and several members of Union president Abraham Lincoln's cabinet, such as Salmon Chase and William Seward, can also be found in Arndt's collection. A final category within his collection features every United States president from John Adams through Abraham Lincoln, excluding John Tyler. The CDVs of the earlier presidents feature sketches of the men, but beginning with John Quincy Adams they show photographs.
This is a remarkable collection due to the large number of Union and Confederate officers as well as the presidents. Many of the CDVs are quite rare and they allow Civil War researchers to put faces to the names they see again and again in primary sources.
