The cover story of our Summer 2024 issue profiled Evander M. Law’s rise to general in the Confederate army. The project began after I met collector Craig Wofford, who shared his distinctive ambrotype of Law and his staff. After that first meeting, which occurred in Virginia at the South Boston Civil War and Military Collectors Show hosted by the South Boston-Halifax County Museum of Fine Arts and History, I met Craig and his wife Carol at their home, and we worked together to tell the story behind the photograph.
While researching Law’s life and service, I happened upon an eyewitness account of his wounding during the First Battle of Manassas, where then Lt. Col. Law suffered a gunshot in the arm that toppled him from his horse, blood streaming along his forearm and down his fingers.
It did not occur to me that he might have sat for a portrait during his recuperation.
A few months ago, I learned that such an image existed. In December, soon after the Middle Tennessee Civil War Show in Franklin, I received a text and picture from Kolt Massie that sent a chill through me—the tintype reproduced on the cover of this issue of a gaunt Law, coat unbuttoned, his arm in a sling.
Lightning strikes twice!
Kolt, an active collector who started at a young age, shares artifacts and images around the country and at his local museum in Berryville, Ark. In 2022, he opened Massie’s Antiques, which specializes in antique photography, Civil War artifacts, Southern history, and ephemera. A friend and client made him aware of this image, part of a group that includes Law-related letters and other images believed to be his wife, Jennie. Kolt met with the owner on video, ran through the material, and negotiated a deal. A package containing the grouping arrived while he was away at the Franklin Show. “It was unbelievable opening up and laying eyes on these images,” Kolt wrote to me when I asked him to describe his experience.
The grouping is now in the Dan Schwab Collection. When I had the opportunity to see the Law image and other materials shortly before writing this column, I had the same reaction as Kolt did.
Reflecting on these experiences, and so many others, reminds me of the thrill of this photographic discovery, and the noble work by the collecting community to surface historic images, to tell the stories behind them, and to preserve them for future generations.
Ronald S. Coddington
Editor & Publisher
Law, left, in 1861 after the First Battle of Manassas, and circa 1864. Dan Schwab Collection; Craig and Carol Wofford Collection.
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