During the Civil War, brevet ranks were honorary ranks, awarded for gallantry in action or meritorious service, sort of like medals are today. For most of the war, brevets were awarded rather sparingly, but near the end of the conflict, the War Department started passing them out like chewing gum samples. 1,367 men who had never held general officer rank in the regular or volunteer service ended up as brevet brigadier or major generals.

While working on my General Officers of the Civil War site, I ran across a lot of pictures of these guys, and figured people might like to see them. So here they are. No frills. No fancy stuff. Just pictures with names tacked on.

A couple more things before we get to the pictures....

 Are you going to find pictures of all 1,367 here? Not by a long shot! I'm just putting up pictures I happen to find on the Web. As of now, there are only 105 pictures in the collection.

 I'm putting the pictures on the pages in absolutely no logical order whatever. I have very little time for maintaining this site, and not having to keep them in a certain order will make updates much easier. If I end up with a whole lot of 'em, I may make up an index. But don't count on it.

 The pictures are displayed 25 per page. I've cropped and shrunk and squeezed and stomped on these things until they're rather small pictures and rather small files. But the pages still may take a while to load if you don't have a really fast connection. If you don't want to wait for that, hit your BACK button now and go somewhere else.

 If you're interested in finding out more about brevet promotions, there's a good summary in the U.S. Civil War FAQ file. Or head off to the library or bookstore for a copy of Ezra Warner's Generals in Blue. The brevet system is discussed in the introduction, and Appendix I is a list of all 1,367 brevet generals. There's another book, Brevet Brigadier Generals in Blue, by Roger D. Hunt and Jack R. Brown. I haven't been able to dig up a copy of this one yet, so I can't tell you what it contains.

 I hadn't intended to include a links list on this site, but I did note a few interesting ones while gathering up the pictures. Feel free to check out the very short list of links to information about a few of the brevet generals.

 Guess I should mention that all the folks pictured here were on the Union side. Confederate army regulations provided for brevet promotions, but it doesn't seem the Confederate government ever handed out any.

 Finally, if you're interested in pictures of the other (not brevet) generals of the war, you're welcome to drop by my General Officers of the Civil War site.