Culture  /  Retrieval

Tattooing in the Civil War Was a Hedge Against Anonymous Death

Hidden tattoos captured soldiers' pride and patriotism, but also had a practical use.

In 1876, on Oak Street between Oliver and James, a long-lost block of lower Manhattan that now lies underneath a housing project built in the 1950s, a New York Times reporter found the sign he had been looking for—“Tattooing Done Here.” Inside the shop, which he described as “a tavern with a well-sanded floor,” he found Martin Hildebrandt, the most famous tattoo artist in 19th-century America.

Short and talkative, with a crucifix inked on his back, Hildebrandt was happy to tell reporters about his unusual trade. As far as historians can tell, he was the first person in the United States to set up a permanent shop as a tattoo artist, at a time when body art was still a hidden practice in the country, associated with circus performers, faraway cultures, sailors, and native tribes.

But quietly Americans of all sorts were getting tattoos. Secret societies such as the Masons and Good Fellows had their members inked with special signs, and as Hildebrandt would tell the Times reporter, he’d worked on people from high and low society—from mechanics and farmers to “real ladies” and gentlemen. During the Civil War, when he’d served in the Union’s Army of the Potomac, Hildebrandt had initiated at least a brigade’s worth of soldiers into the culture of ink.

“During the war time I never had a moment’s idle time,” Hildebrandt told the reporter. “I must have marked thousands of sailors and soldiers.”

Hildebrandt is the only tattoo artist known to have spoken openly about creating Civil War tattoos. But other accounts and historical records hint that the practice of getting inked became more widespread during the war. “It probably means there were other tattoo artists; we just don’t know who they were,” says Michelle Myles, the co-owner of Daredevil Tattoo, a Lower East Side shop with its own museum collection of antique tattooing memorabilia. For the first time in American history, tattooing was becoming part of mainstream American culture.

The Civil War helped tattooing begin a transition from the military to wider society, and ushered in the style of classic tattooing unique to America. Tattooing had long been widespread among sailors, but during the war men who would never have considered getting a tattoo before wanted a way to show their allegiance to their cause and to identify themselves in the event of death.