McLean Familly Donates Civil War Collection to The Library of Congress

Poignant, solemn faces of young men, women, and children who lived through or fought in the Civil War are the subject of a new Library of Congress exhibition, "The Last Full Measure: Civil War Photographs from the Liljenquist Family Collection," opening Tuesday.

It was McLean resident Tom Liljenquist and his sons, Jason, 19, Brandon, 17, and Christian, 13, who donated some 700 photographs to the Library—both ambrotype (produced on a sheet of glass) and tintype (produced on sheet of iron metal). Mr. Liljenquist, who owns Liljenquist & Beckstead Jewelers, attributes the gift to his children. “They thought the photographs could do something; could make a powerful statement, somehow,” he says.

The opening of the collection  is timed to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, which began with the infamous shots at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on in April 12, 1861.

It was a fifteen-year effort to amass the collection, which includes photographs of both Union and Confederate, which are much more rare, soldiers. It began in the summer of 1996, when he and his sons discovered Civil War-era lead bullets near a creek by their old house in Arlington. It sparked an interest within all of them; soon enough they were out by the creek with a newly purchased metal detector. By the end of the summer, they had found about four-dozen bullets. “It was a really special time for us,” Mr. Liljenquist remembers.

The passion for Civil War artifacts led them to an antique store in Ellicott City, where he and his boys saw the photograph that would initiate their collection. “We felt like we were collecting a little piece of history,” he says.

From Civil War shops and antique galleries, to auctions and estate sales, they traveled north and south of the Mason Dixon line to discover more of these bits of history. When the distance was too great, they turned to eBay. Father and sons did not want to stop adding to their assortment. So, the photographs stacked and stored in their house continued to add up.

Then, in the summer of 2009, the Washington Post ran a series of photo spreads with the faces of all United States servicemen and women killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The photos resonated deeply with Brandon and Jason. It also gave them an idea to take an inventory of their collection.

After they took stock, they chose 412 their favorite images; this number would represent 360 Union soldiers (one photograph for every thousand people who died in the War), and 52 Confederate soldiers (one photograph for every five thousandth killed). “Presented together, we hoped the photographs would illustrate the magnitude of our nation's loss of 620,000 lives in a way never before shown in the history books,” Brandon writes in an essay about their project.

The boys wrote an exhibition proposal, and shopped around the D.C. area art and cultural museums for takers. When the Library of Congress called, Mr. Liljenquist, Brandon, and Jason packed 150 “samples” to show to Carol Johnson, Curator of Photography, and Helena Zinkman, Chief of the Prints and Photographs Division.

Johnson remembers being particularly impressed with Mr. Liljenquist’s eye for selecting powerful portraits that depict the youthfulness of the boys who went off to battle. “I was surprised at how young many of the soldiers look,” she says. “They look like teenagers.”

Although the minimum age for fighting was 18, Mr. Liljenquist notes that many of the boys who went to war lied about their age during their enlistments. His family’s collection certainly reflects this fact. Indeed, he and his sons concentrated on finding pictures of the lesser soldiers—the privates and the corporals—instead of more commonly seen generals and politicians of the same time period. “As the father of three young boys, it seemed more right to collect photos of young men,” he says.

This composition of the Liljenquist collection immediately attracted the interest of the Library. “Although the Library has lots of portraits from the Civil War era, most of them show the famous officers, not the soldiers who fought on the front lines,” Johnson says.

In March of 2010, the family decided to part with their assembled photographs, for the benefit of generations to come. “No matter what you’re collecting, you want to share,” Mr. Liljenquist says. They donated the collection in its entirety to the Library.

“Laying out the photographs at home for the last time, and thinking about the collection in a whole new light, I couldn't help but notice how similar the faces of these soldiers were to those we'd seen in The Washington Post,” Brandon writes. “These were the young men who did most of the fighting and dying. In their eyes and the eyes of their loved ones, I could see the full range of human emotion. It was all here: the bravado, the fear, the readiness, the weariness, the pride and the anguish.”

Just in time for the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, the Library has digitized the photographs included in the Liljenquist gift. The public—researchers, students, authors, enthusiasts, curious passersby—all has unrestricted access to the hundreds of faces of men and women who took part in an era that demarcated the boundaries of our nation’s soul.

“We’ll never even know how many places they are being used,” Mr. Liljenquist says.” But they will all add interest to stories that are being written about the War. The original photographs will degrade, but not the ones online.”

Rare images will be on view, including African Americans in uniform, sailors, a Lincoln campaign button, and portraits of soldiers with their wives and children. A few personal stories have survived in notes pinned to the photo cases, but most of the people and photographers are unidentified.

“Their connection to a family has been severed over time,” Johnson says regarding these anonymous faces.  “I would encourage the public to gather as much information as they can about their own photographs, so future generations will ‘know’ their ancestors.”

It will be a photographic memorial to those, named and unnamed, who gave their lives for their country. The title of the exhibition is drawn from a phrase from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “That from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.”

These are words that echo through the rooms of the exhibition, and resonate within the spirit of the Liljenquist family’s gift.

“It is a story, really, about the boys,” Mr. Liljenquist says. “The collection was a labor of love. They really want to inspire others to take an interest in history.”

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 View the entire Liljenquist Family Collection. Also images can be viewed through Flickr Commons, where readers can assist in identifying individuals and photographers based on such clues as painted backdrops and regimental insignia. 

"The Last Full Measure: Civil War Photographs from the Liljenquist Family Collection" is free and open to the public from Tuesday to August 13, 2011, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday, in the second-floor South Gallery of the Library’ of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building.