[AMERICAN CIVIL WAR] Henry Morton Stanley : a rare studio portrait of the African explorer in his Union naval uniform, taken during his service on USS Minnesota in late 1864 or early 1865.

A$3,000 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Albumen print photograph (a copy print made in 1872 from a print made by an unidentified American studio in 1864-65), carte de visite format, 103 x 63 mm (mount); verso with imprint of J. Laing, Portrait Landscape Photographer, Miniature Portrait Painter. Castle Street, Shrewsbury , and with an inscription in ink by the original owner J. Prettey, August 9 [18]72 and a roughly contemporary inscription in pencil identifying the sitter as Livingstone s Discoverer, Stanley ; in very good condition. A rare and important portrait documenting part of the American military career of Henry Morton Stanley possibly the only man to have served in the Confederate Army, the Union Army and the Union Navy during the Civil War. Eighteen-year-old Welsh cabin boy John Rowlands arrived in New Orleans in the spring of 1859, and immediately experienced a sense of liberation from the British class system. Whether or not young Rowlands was indeed re-baptised and adopted by New Orleans cotton merchant Henry Hope Stanley has been the subject of much conjecture; however, he proceeded to take on a new identity in America, abandoning the name Rowlands and re-naming himself in honour of his new mentor. In 1861, with some reluctance and partially out of fear of being branded a coward, Stanley enlisted in the Confederate army in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was attached to the 6th Arkansas Volunteer Regiment. In April 1862 he was captured by Union troops at the Battle of Shiloh, and incarcerated at Camp Dougla

• Binding: Hardcover

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