[Two Unidentified Women]

Carl Casper Giers, a German emigrant to the United States, ran a successful photographic studio in Nashville, Tennessee, from the late 1850s until his death. When this photograph was taken-sometime between 1863 and 1866-Nashville was under the control of federal troops, and Giers accordingly changed the name of his establishment from the Southern Photographic Temple of Fine Arts to the National Portrait Gallery.
When the Union Army took Nashville in early 1862, slaves-perhaps as many as 8,000 of them-poured into the city from the surrounding countryside to become freedmen under the terms of the Confiscation Act and later the Emancipation Proclamation. Judging from the dress of the two women in this portrait, they were probably freedwomen from the country recently arrived in Nashville.