Nice Federal overcoat image - eBay

[markj]

Greetings,

Some of you will undoubtedly enjoy this image of a youthful "Fed" in his well-worn overcoat:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...category=13960

Regards,

Mark Jaeger

[va-yank]

Does anyone besides the seller think that this is a photo of a "North Carolina Confederate" ?

[NY Pvt]

He might be from North Carolina but I will eat my hat if he is a confederate. Experts? In what? World War II?

Neat picture though.

[HOG.EYE.MAN]

Yeah, it's a neat picture.

"His romantic eyes contrast with his Mississippi rifle and bayonet in the other hand."

Oh boy....

Neat image Mark, thanks for sharing.

[markj]

Greetings Fred, Dane, et. al.,

Ah, but you need to scroll down all the way and read what's at the bottom of the listing. The seller was subsequently informed by another party that his initial ID was incorrect so he updated his description.

All in all, a very nice image. It will no doubt go for a handsome sum.

Regards,

Mark Jaeger

[1stMaine]

Comrades,
One thing to consider when viewing this image is the gender of the subject. My wife and daughter were interested in this image as well, and both are convinced that the young soldier is a woman.
Scroll down to the larger images and note the absence of an adam's apple. Also take a good long look at the thin delicate fingers and the long fingernails. Couple that with the wry smile and those eyes and voila!...
It's altogether possible that this is a woman posing in a soldier's uniform, for whatever reason that might be, and it's also possible that this is in fact a woman soldier.
Take the time to go back and examine this image from the perspective of gender and see what you come up with.
respects,

[markj]

Hi,

Hard to tell one way or another. You have no doubt read wartime and post-war accounts by men remarking on (indisputably male) comrades who "were pretty as a girl." Given that quite a few men and boys of the day were delicately-framed, often attributable to diet and health issues, the confusion engendered (no pun intended) by such photos is not hard to understand.
For example, I was rather surprised to find that the much-maligned William Bligh, of "Bounty" fame, was rather small--I think he was only about 5' 4" and weighed maybe 120 pounds soaking wet. His portraits show a man very different from those portrayed by Charles Laughton, Trevor Howard, or Anthony Hopkins. "Ditto" for Lord Horatio Nelson.

Regards,

Mark

[va-yank]

Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say he is all that feminine looking. Nice photo of a soldier who seems very proud of himself, and is striking an oddly relaxed pose, compared to the usual stiff caught in the headlights look you often see. Good image of the coat too. Can see stitching in the edges, even what looks like a hook or two on the collar. Wish we could get a closer look at those buttonholes.

[1stMaine]

Comrades,
All I'm saying is go back and reexamine the image with an open mind. Look at the line of the jaw, the hair, the neck sans adam's apple, the thin smooth hands and nails. Yeah, the kid could be a nice gentle boy, but I suspect that too many of us fall into the trap of seeing what we expect to see, not what's really there. The Devil's in the details, after all, and there's always more to any image than what our eyes are telling us we see.
Respects,

[2RIVB]

Looking at the picture closely, in my not so expert medical opinion, this person is indeed male, and does indeed have an adams apple. It is not very pronounced, but it is there. Maybe the resolution you were veiwing it at isn't that great. Also, the facial features are more masculine. The posture is also very male. Men have a different posture than women, do to the anatomical structure of their bodies, based on what the different sex's bodies are biologically designed for. Just my 2 cents.