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Mathew Brady Studio. Camp of 31st Pennsylvania Infantry near Washington, D.C. Photograph, 1862, printed later. Civil War Photographs Collection. Prints and Photographs Division. LC-B8171-2405 (film negative).

Princess Agnes Salm-Salm, wife of Prince Felix of Prussia, who served with the Union Army, observed in January 1862 that the winter camp of the Army of the Potomac was "teeming with women." Some wives insisted on staying with their husbands, which may have been the case with this woman, judging by her housewifely pose alongside a soldier, three young children, and a puppy. In addition to taking care of her own family, she may have worked as a camp laundress or nurse. Some women who lacked the marital voucher of respectability were presumed to be prostitutes and were periodically ordered out of camp. Only gradually during the four years of the war, and in the face of unspeakable suffering, were women grudgingly accepted by military officials and the general public in the new public role of nurse. (For the Civil War Photographs Collection, see page 198.)

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Otto Henry Bacher. Women in a restaurant in a tall building. Wash drawing, ca. 1903. Cabinet of American Illustration. CAI-Bacher, no. 6 (D size). Prints and Photographs Division. LC-USZC4-1204.

Otto Henry Bacher's portrayal of women in a restaurant--both diners and waitresses--is one of several studies of women of various circumstances that Bacher made for the Century Magazine and other magazines. The uncaptioned image is one of those by Bacher held in the Prints and Photographs Division's Cabinet of American Illustration. A search reveals that this wash drawing may have been intended to illustrate an article by Cleveland Moffett entitled "Mid-Air Dining Clubs" published in the Century Magazine in September 1901, although this particular image did not appear in the issue. Moffett describes the growth of the dining clubs in New York City, the way women used their husbands' memberships to hold parties in separate ladies' dining rooms, and the pioneering Business Woman's Club, whose members, nearly three hundred working women, enjoyed its inexpensive meals and its lounges, where they could take "half an hour's nap against nerves and headache." (See the Cabinet of American Illustration, page 191.)

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Chicana artist Ester Hernández, a member of the women's artist collective Las Mujeres Muralistas (Women Muralists), uses icons in almost all her work. Inspired by the nation's American Revolution Bicentennial celebrations in 1976, Hernández laid claim to the Statue of Liberty--emblem of European immigration, citizenship, plurality, freedom and also a conventional symbol of American identity--and here reworks it into a powerful symbol of resistance to assimilation. The inscription "Aztlán" (White Land) refers to the Aztec land of origin, located in the area of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and California. (For fine prints, see page 209.)

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Clara Ellen Tarte Davenport and her students in Unalaska, ca. 1910-12, from "Unalaska Days: A Diary." Photographer unknown, possibly Noah C. Davenport. Noah Cleveland Davenport Papers (container 1). Manuscript Division. LC-MS-60418-1.

In August 1910, twenty-five-year-old Clara Ellen Tarte (1885-1974) married her Bellingham Normal School classmate Noah Clevelend Davenport (1885-1976) and returned with him to Alaska, where he had spent the previous year as a teacher in a federal government school on the Aleutian Peninsula. The Davenports' joint diary describes their home in the village of Unalaska and their experiences teaching school there. On September 6, 1910, Noah wrote that Clara "was pleasantly surprised at the brightness, good manners and cleanliness of the children. They were studious and not inclined to mischief."