August 2011

In 2006, conservator Ralph Wiegandt flipped on his Zeiss Axio stereomicroscope and peered at the surface of an 1848 daguerreotype. The Cincinnati Public Library had entrusted him to clean its prize possession, a rare five-and-a-half-foot-long, eight-plate panorama photograph of the city’s waterfront. Working out of the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, he found the image’s surface strewn with corrosive particles, as he had expected. But, at the same time, extraordinary details from the image jumped out at him: letters on a billboard, a face in a window. Black spots indeterminate to the naked eye magically resolved into wagons, groups of men, and laundry drying on a clothes line.

Eagerly, Wiegandt moved his microscope over to the Second Presbyterian Church’s clock tower in the panorama’s second plate. Librarians in 1947 had pinpointed the photograph’s date withmagnifying glasses and steamboat manifests to Sunday, September 24, 1848, but they couldn’t determine the time of day on the blurry clock face. Wiegandt adjusted the microscope, and the clock’s hands popped into focus: 1:55 p.m. No one had ever seen these details before.

As the editor of the papers of George Washington at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, I have the privilege of meeting with many people who come bearing documents supposedly signed by the first president. More often than you might think, I have the unenviable task of informing them that their letter‚ often lovingly framed and passed down for decades in their family, is a fake. An office file, which we've marked "Forgeries," overflows with dozens of similar examples. Individuals and families are not the only ones duped by what I've discovered has been a robust 150-year-old market in Washington forgeries. Recently a well-meaning alumnus sold a multipage letter apparently in Washington's handwriting to a major university library. The librarians placed the letter on display and trumpeted their acquisition to the media. Several months later, an astute visitor pointed out some strangely awkward flourishes in the letter's handwriting. Upon examination, the letter turned out to be the work of a prolific 19th-century forger.

SPRINGFIELD, MO—Confederate forces under Gen. Ben McCullough now occupying Springfield; McCullough has issued orders to his victorious men that they are not to confiscate or harm the property of private citizens.

WILSON’S CREEK, MO—Union troops wounded during the Battle of Wilson’s Creek are now arriving at St. Louis, MO, where they are receiving care from the newly formed Ladies’ Union Aid Society.

WILSON’S CREEK, MO—9:43 a.m. Union sources confirm that General Lyon has been killed in battle.

WILSON’S CREEK, MO—9:30 a.m. Unconfirmed reports from the front line that General Lyon has fallen during the defense of Bloody Hill.

WILSON’S CREEK, MO—5 a.m. General Lyon has ordered attack on McCullough’s army; Battle of Wilson’s Creek has begun.

SPRINGFIELD, MO—Multiple reports that Union General Nathaniel Lyon is marching his 5,400 men from Springfield to Wilson’s Creek to engage Gen. Ben McCullough’s 11,000 Confederate troops.