Clara Barton and Mathew Brady during the Civil War (1961 US Army Film)

This video contains Army Digest Number Eight, a documentary filmed by the US Army. While this public domain video was in rather good shape, we have remastered it in that the video has been sharpened, and certain digital artifacts were removed. It is believed the original film was released in 1961, but unfortunately no other information is currently available, including who starred in the film.

The “The Mathew Brady Story” brings to the television screen the work of the famed photographer who, during the Civil War, earned the title of “The First Combat Photographer.” In this documentary, Brady’s crisp visual account of the Civil War and its men is brought to life as music, sound, and movement team up with Brady’s photographic skill to give THE BIG PICTURE audience an authentic sense of what it was like to live and fight through the years when our nation’s unity hung in the balance.

In the “Clara Barton Story,” the personal chronicle of the woman who was instrumental in founding the Red Cross – the accounting, in her own words, of her part in a single day of the Battle of Antietam – is documented through scenes shot at the actual site of the battle, near Hagerstown, Maryland. Hagerstown residents ably portray Miss Barton and those with whom – and for whom – she worked, in the midst of that tragic day and night of fighting, adding visual drama to a narrative excerpted from words written by Clara Barton herself.