Unknown Stories Of The Civil War A new exhibit at the Long Island Museum

Born in Canada and a resident of Brooklyn from age 18, Robert Knox Sneden (1832-1918) enlisted in the Army of the Potomac in 1861 and was recruited as a mapmaker. In the dark of the night in 1863, with the cold barrel of a Confederate pistol at his temple, men under the command of the celebrated John Singleton Mosby, "The Gray Ghost," captured Sneden. Pistol-whipped and wounded, Sneden was led to prison in Richmond, Virginia. Held in some of the worst and most infamous Confederate prisons of the war, including, Andersonville, Sneden continued to document his experience. He hid his dramatic pencil sketches in his shoes or sewed them in his coat so that prison guards would not steal them. His depictions of captivity are disturbing and uncomfortably detailed, showing scenes of starvation, fear, and loss of hope. Sneden returned to Brooklyn in 1864 only to find that he had been declared missing or dead. Permanently disabled by his 13 months in prison, he used his time to turn his pencil sketches into watercolors. Although Sneden drew many of his drawings while he was at the battle, numerous drawings were done after the war was over. His drawings show ruins of homes and buildings after battles, headquarters of important generals, gunboats under fire, camps, battlefields filled with smoke from guns and cannons, precise maps, and the horrific conditions of prison camps.

Although the Civil War battlefields came no closer to New York than Gettysburg, many in this region joined the effort to preserve the Union and to ensure freedom for all. Nearly 35,000 soldiers from Long Island served in the Civil War. Several volunteer outfits were formed on Long Island in 1862, including six companies of men from the 119th and the 127th New York State Regiments, the first formed by Roslyn lawyer Benjamin Willis. These enlisted men were primarily trained on Staten Island and then shipped out to Washington, D.C., where they eventually moved on to the battlefields of Virginia and further south. Although most initially marched into battle with great excitement, Long Islanders soon found the reality of war was a much different experience. Loss of life was enormous. Many died from illness -typhoid, dysentary, and pneumonia. Worse yet was the fate of those captured and placed in Southern prison camps. Andersonville, Georgia, a place that Robert Sneden was held captive, was the most notorious. Desertion from these dire circumstances was not unusual. Through artifacts, historical photographs, and written archival materials including letters and diaries, visitors to this exhibit are able to relive that same sense of dedication and the heroism, as well as the ways in which the Civil War experience changed their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

Eye of the Storm: The Civil War Drawings of Robert Sneden