25 Horrifying Images of The Civil War

Burnt-out and demolished buildings in Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy, in 1865.

Unused cannons and cannonballs litter the ground on the banks of the James River in Richmond, Virginia, with the city showing signs of destruction in the background. (The intact neoclassical building in the background is the state capitol, designed by Thomas Jefferson and French architect Charles-Louis Clérisseau; it still stands.)

Heinrich (Henry) Wirz, who commanded the infamous Confederate prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia – in which nearly 13,000 Union soldiers died under horrific conditions – being hanged in Washington, D.C., on Nov, 10, 1865, for conspiracy and murder.

The Potomac Creek Bridge in Stafford County, Virginia, built in nine days in May 1862 by Union troops under the supervision of engineer Herman Haupt – a photograph taken by legendary photographer Mathew Brady.

Washington Arsenal – now Fort Lesley J. McNair – on Greenleaf Point, near the junction of the Anacostia River and the Washington Channel in the nation’s capital, circa 1861.