Officers, Horses, and a Battery Behind

A knot of officers and men stands with their horses on the flat, and behind them a battery line is drawn up small against a dark, dramatic sky — the second of Haas & Peale's plates of an artillery unit the Library of Congress leaves unnamed.

The sky is worth a word: wet-plate emulsions read light unevenly, and Morris Island's glare and haze gave these plates their heavy heavens. What the camera got exactly right is the posture of men who have been asked to stand still in the heat and are nearly done being willing.