It was so nearly like visiting the battlefield to look over these views, that all the emotions excited by the actual sight of the stained and sordid scene, strewed with rags and wrecks, came back to us, and we buried them in the recesses of our cabinet as we would have buried the mutilated remains of the dead they too vividly represented. 44 Holmes is torn between the urge to look at the pictures and the urge to hide them away. His conflict is precisely the same as that of the Times writer, though his expression of it is far more evocative. Troubled by the violent emotions kindled within him by the sight of the battlefield, and now rekindled by the photographs, Holmes seeks to bury them. Yet through such martyrdom must come our redemption.
War is the surgery of crime.
Bad as it is in itself, it always implies that something worse has gone before. For both writers, the dead men in the Antietam photographs are martyrs. For Holmes, however, the soldiers are holy martyrs, even redeemers. For the Times writer, the photographs are honorific images, while for Holmes they are consecrated, iconic. However, this difference between the writers is principally one of degree.