Death of Lieut. Col. Henry Clay Jr. of the Second Regiment Kentucky Volunteers vintage cigar art smoke-like spirals and gem-strewn clusters

smoke-like spirals and gem-strewn clusters that haunted the great reflectors of the 1800s — Lord Rosse's leviathan among them — into a single contemplative plate

his bearded gravity rendered in the heavy ink and steady line reserved for men who commanded fleets in a war fought as much by ledger as by cannon

Wheeler 1876 — a Republican campaign lithograph from the centennial year

the Confederate brigades breaking against earthworks where minutes of fighting cost what hours could not redeem

Death of Lieut. Col. Henry Clay Jr. of the Second Regiment Kentucky Volunteers vintage cigar art smoke-like spirals and gem-strewn clustersDeath of Lieut. Col. Henry Clay Jr. of the Second Regiment Kentucky Volunteers a battlefield lithograph from the Mexican War, mourning the Great Compromiser's son fallen at Buena Vista, where Manifest Destiny collected its private debts and a Kentucky regiment learned what the rhetoric of expansion actually cost. About the Source Bella Frye sources artifacts from the great American historical archive the Library of Congress, the National Archives,