[Wagons Below Confederate Entrenchments, Belle Plain, Virginia]

Art Historical Context

**Wagons Below Confederate Entrments, Belle Plain,** (1864) is a poignant albumen silver print from glass negative, captured by Gardner as part of the team led by Timothy H. O'Sullivan and Mathew B.. This photograph from the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection depicts a cluster of wagons poised beneath Confederate defensive lines at Belle Plain, Virginia—a Union supply hub during the brutal Overland Campaign of the American Civil War. The underscores the gritty logistics of war, where endless wagon trains ferried vital provisions to sustain exhausted troops far from home. In 1864, as Genera...