William Mahone

William Mahone, former Confederate general and leader of the short-lived Readjuster Party, peers directly at the camera in this portrait made in Washington, D.C. Scratched into the emulsion at the top of the glass-plate negative is "Mahone, 2462, Sen. Billy Mahone." Mahone served as a U.S. senator from Virginia from 1881 until 1887. This image is part of the Brady-Handy photograph collection at the Library of Congress, which consists of about 10,000 negatives from the photographic studios of Mathew Brady and his nephew, Levin Corbin Handy. Most of the images are portraits of political and military leaders during and after the Civil War.