This photograph was taken by Charles R. Rees, who operated a thriving studio in Richmond, Virginia, at the beginning of the war. Rees was one of the era’s few photographers who signed his images directly on the glass plate. The barefoot young boy holds a photographic portrait of a soldier, suggesting that perhaps his father or another close relative had gone off to war, as was the case for so many other American children during the war. Children could also experience the war vicariously by staging battles with lead toy soldiers, like this boxed set sold as the “Campaign in Virginia.”