The photograph titled “General Grant at City Point” shows the famous Civil War general astride his horse at the Union Army headquarters at City Point. Or at least it depicts him there, as the only part of Grant actually in the picture is his head. The body and horse belong to Major Gen. Alexander M. McCook, while the background was taken from a photograph of Confederate prisoners captured at the Battle of Fisher’s Hill in Virginia.

This early example of manipulated photography (wet-plate collodion slop?) was the handiwork of Levin Corbin Handy, Mathew Brady’s nephew who created the fiction to "satisfy the steady demand for heroic images of the war fought by the fathers and grandfathers of his turn-of-the-century clientele." Handy, who began apprenticing under his celebrated uncle when he was just 12 years old, produced the print in 1902..