*Throughout 2025, the “Publication of Note” portion of the newsletter will highlight some of the director’s favorite books related to Civil War art.
Visual representations of the Civil War’s battlefields, personalities, and historic landscapes provide vital insights into our nation’s defining moment. For those interested in the Civil War in the Shenandoah Valley, none is more significant than James E. Taylor’s “Sketchbook.” Taylor, who was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1839, enlisted in the Tenth New York Infantry, National Zouaves, in 1861. After his enlistment expired in 1863, he worked for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. In 1864, Taylor served as an embedded artist correspondent with Union General Philip H. Sheridan’s Army of the Shenandoah. Throughout the summer and autumn of 1864, Taylor sketched hundreds of locations across the Shenandoah Valley, illustrated battle scenes, and vividly captured the war’s impact on the region’s landscape and people.
While this book is no longer in print, used copies can be purchased, not cheaply, on the secondary market. However, there is no more significant source of visual representations of the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War than this volume.
