You’ve likely heard of Samuel F.B Morse, generally credited with the invention of the telegraph. But you might be less aware that the man who famously used his code to say “what hath God wrought?” was also an artist, in fact one of America’s best and most prolific portrait artists, one of our most gifted historical artists, and a leading figure in the development of an American school of art.
In August of 1918, as the armies of Europe neared exhaustion, American troops of the 28th “Keystone” division were thrown into a nearly forgotten battle that fully represented the horrors of the War to End All Wars.
Of the vaunted ironclad warships of the US Civil War perhaps the mightiest and most terrifying was the confederate ram Tennessee. On August 5, 1864, she would be put to the test in the largest naval engagement of the war, an engagement that defined the divided loyalties of the War of the Rebellion.