New Bern's harbor in 1864

 Voltaire Combe's remarkable wartime lithograph

New Berne, N.C., Voltaire Combe, artist, Major & Knapp, New York,
lithographers, 1864.

By John B. Green III

The September 11, 1865 edition of the New Berne Daily Times, bears the first notice, seen below, of the existence of a large and handsome lithograph of New Bern which could be "obtained from Mr. V. Combe, or at the stores of E. Young and J.E. West, on Pollock street."  Voltaire Combe was the artist responsible for the creation of this lithograph, and, aside from being an artist, he was also a Union soldier stationed in New Bern.

New Berne Daily Times, September 11, 1865.

The Union Army occupied many areas of North Carolina during the Civil War including New Bern. The town was captured March 14, 1862, during the Burnside Expedition and remained under Union Army control and governance until well past the end of the war.  Among the thousands of Union soldiers stationed, at one time or another, in New Bern, was a 25-year-old artist from New York state named Voltaire Combe.  He was born in 1837 and originally named William Combs. He had changed his name by the time of his enlistment in the Third New York Calvary in July 1861.  As Voltaire Combe, he served as a private and bugler, then for a few months as a sergeant, before being "returned to ranks" and mustered out on July 29, 1864.  Voltaire Combe would be known in later life as a painter of romantic images of women and landscapes and as a firm traditionalist who railed against the more modern artistic movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Detail of left-hand side of lithograph.

When Voltaire Combe wasn't participating in the activities of his regiment, he must have been busily sketching scenes of interest in and around New Bern.  Combe produced at least two lithographs of New Bern: the large view of the town and harbor seen here and a smaller print of Camp Oliver of the Twenty-fifth Massachusetts Regiment.  In both instances he turned to the firm of Major & Knapp of New York to transform his art into a colored lithograph that he might sell.

Detail of right-hand side of lithograph.

Voltaire Combe's rendering of New Bern exhibits considerable detail, mostly accurate.  The layout of the town is shown with its streets, public buildings, churches, wharves, and some individual houses. The harbor, though more crowded than it probably ever was on any given day, displays the wide variety of ships which the Union Army and Navy used in the shallow waters of eastern North Carolina.

Only a few copies of Voltaire Combe's great lithograph of New Bern survive and ours is, doubtless, the worst of the bunch.  It has been trimmed to fit an inappropriate frame, losing in the process, more than a foot of sky as well as some of its side and bottom margins.  It is acid-browned from the wooden backing in the frame, water-stained, scraped, gouged, torn, and bug-bitten. Yet, for all that, the most important parts of the image survive along with the title and publication information.  It's ours, and we like it.