Students of the Civil War will no doubt recognize this image from countless publications.  It features a seated General Lee, flanked by two staff officers. The photo was taken after the surrender at Appomattox, with Lee’s son Gen. G.W. Custis Lee (left) and aide Lt. Col. Walter Taylor (right).

In May 1861, Custis Lee resigned his commission in the U.S. Army shortly after Virginia voted to secede from the Union. During the Civil War he attained the rank of Brigadier General, C.S.A., serving as aide-de-camp to President Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy. Though Custis spent most of the war working in Davis's office, he volunteered to take his younger brother Rooney's place as a prisoner of war so that Rooney could come home to be with his dying wife in 1863. After the war he was a professor of military science and engineering at Virginia Military Institute, and in 1871 succeeded his late father as President of Washington College (now Washington & Lee University).

Walter Herron Taylor (June 13, 1838 – March 1, 1916) was an American banker, lawyer, soldier, politician, author, and railroad executive from Norfolk, Virginia. During the American Civil War, he fought with the Confederate States Army, became a key aide to General Robert E. Lee and rose to the rank of Colonel. After the war, Taylor became a senator in the Virginia General Assembly, and attorney for the Norfolk and Western Railway and later the Virginian Railway.

The image is mounted to a commonly seen style of card, with a double-line gold border pattern. The card is marked in inked script across the lower border “General Lee and two of his staff – 1861 -1865”.  The card shows moderate wear at each corner and sections of the edges, with foxing and discoloration.  The image shows some foxing and discoloration but remains in comparatively good condition – the edges and corners are sharp, save for the top left.

The reverse is blank, with an understated but an initialed, stylized photographer’s back mark.  Foxing and spotted discoloration is noted across the face.

A rare but recognizable photograph that would be a feature of any Civil War image collection.  [cm/ld][ph:L]

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