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Fake News During the Civil War


Cholla

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We were discussing altered photos from WWI and then this thread popped up on another site.

https://civilwartalk.com/threads/union-casualties-in-devils-den-november-1863.179290/

It seems "fake" or at least staged photos were common in the 1860s.

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Yes. It would seem Civil War re-enactments started during the Civil War! Who knew?

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I don't believe that photographs back then were supposed to "store history" or to "show the news". Photographs, like paintings, were art.

 

Even if there had still been bodies on the field when he arrived, he would have most likely arranged the bodies to make a better picture. Art.

 

 

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"Fake news" was part and parcel of that particular time, and not just in photographs.

Morgan's Raid -- the longest, deepest, fastest and most disconcerting incursion of Southern forces into Yankee territory of that entire War -- resulted in a military practice still in use today.

He had a telegrapher among his men, "Lightning" Ellsworth, a man wh carried a portable set with him: he'd coon up a pole, hook onto the wires, listen to dispatches and call their content down to Morgan, then at Morgan's direction, he'd grip the gutta-percha button between thumb and forefinger and send misinformation.

It worked very well.

Yankee forces chased their tails thanks to this Fake News.

As a result, we now have something called Message Authentication, and it's thanks to Lightning Ellsworth's efforts.

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