Here’s an interesting portrait of Grant as Major General that shows the photographic trade during the Civil War in a rather poor light. The bottom edge of the card is pre-printed with the caption, “Major Gen. U.S. Grant” and the copyright statement: “Entered according to Act of Congress in the  year 1864, by J. Carbutt, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of Illinois.” Grant’s career was certainly nearing its highpoint that year, coming off victories at Vicksburg and Chattanooga, becoming Lieutenant General and commanding general of the U.S. armies, etc., and needless to say the public were anxious to acquire an image of the hero to display at home or put in the family photo album that typically contained images of friends and family side by side images of famous political, military and other public figures, etc., sometimes in what we nowadays find remarkable juxtapositions.

A photographer would thus want to protect his work from copying by other photographers looking to cash in on public interest in the latest famous personality and, further, normally a printed statement such as this card bears would also imply that the photograph was taken from life by the photographer making the claim. In this case, however, a 2020 article by James Bultema in Military Images revealed that this image of Grant was actually one of five taken by photographer Theodore Lilienthal on Sept. 15, 1863, during a visit by Grant to New Orleans, at least one of which bears the imprint: “Entered according to Act of Congress in the Clerk’s Office of the U.S.D.C., Eastern District of Louisiana, by T. Lilienthal, 15^th September, 1863.”

For insight on copyright as it extended to photographic prints like this, see also Guthrie’s article in MI the same year. The matter was apparently not specifically dealt with until 1865 and clarified only later, but photographers before that clearly thought it covered their work and it is thus unclear if Lilienthal copyrighted all five poses and Carbutt did not know it or merely thought his local district court clerk would not find out anytime soon. What the filing, or assertion of the filing, mainly would do, however, is discourage any regional competition in the Chicago market while demand was hot and get Carbutt’s name out there as a photographer associated with the famous in a bit of self-promotion and advertising.  [sr][ph:L]

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