A Redditor recently P.M'ed me asking why I always have blue eyes in my photographs, and I wrote up a long message to him which might be of interest to you, I am partly posting it here to show why I primarily have blue eyes, and partly because I'd like to get some information on whether or not the information I've been told is actually correct or not.
The Civil War was a period of time when there was only around 31-35 million people, according to the 1860 census, accounting for mistakes. These people consisted primarily of Native Americans, some 4 million slaves, and natural born Americans. Most of these Americans consisted of Dutch, German, British, Scandinavian, and generally European people. A heavy number of European countries had blue eyes as their primary eye color even back in those days, and today with our 7 billion total people we have about a 50/50 split of blue and brown, with a small margin of green, yellow, golden, honey, whatever isn't classified as blue and brown inbetween.
The problem with this statistic is that there's 2 billion people in China and India alone (This is not accounting for South America and the Middle East), and 90% (if not more) of the population of India and China have brown eyes predominantly. Lending a large number of the human race to be favored heavily towards brown means that the countries without a predisposition to have brown eyes will have a much larger number of blue eyes than assumed before.
[Here's](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Light_Eyes_in_Europe.png) a good graph that shows the staggering amount of blue eyes in Europe, and most of the blue eyes immigrated to America back when people started settling it.
The reason a lot of people ask why there's a lot of blue eyes, is because I love eyes, they're by far my favorite feature on a human being, and when colorizing I always tend to favor a face with a nice set of clear blue eyes, and with the Civil War subjects being primarily focused on the North that didn't have much to do with 'breeding' with the slaves and the influx of mexicans and a heavy amount of Indians, you can understand how a lot of Northern generals tended to have blue eyes more-so than brown eyes, and I know a lot of Southern gentlemen went and signed up for the Union army, and rose to the rank of General.
This isn't to say everyone had blue eyes, and nobody had green eyes - It's just incredibly hard to find proper records and reliable contemporary eyewitness accounts of the appearance of people at the time. Back then, they didn't think to note someones eye color, but rather how he carried himself and how he was as a person, not the appearance so much. Unfortunately that's also why some people simply never got a photograph taken unless by the request of a family member or close friends.
Another problem we face is something called [orthochromatic emulsion](http://www.009.cd2.com/lynton_and_barnstaple_modelling/images/liveries2_img_0.jpg).
It wasn't a big issue until 1870-1880 when most of the Generals were photographed (Some of them got their photographs taken during the war, but it was incredibly silly to dispatch a General to New York or Washington to get a photograph taken by Mathew Brady in one of his studios, away from the front line), and 90% of all the Confederate photographs you see nowadays (Atleast of the higher ranking officers) are the works of Mathew Brady using the new orthochromatic process, which unfortunately dampened a lot of colors. The other photographs you see were traveling photographers in late 1861/early 1862, either photographed by someone like Alexander Gardner or Timothy O'Sullivan, predominantly, and with a traveling darkroom.
[This](http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cwpbh/03100/03106v.jpg) is a far stretch away from [this](http://www.spurlock.illinois.edu/collections/artifact/InfantryCoat/coat.jpg), wouldn't you say?
This also means that a lot of Generals either had baby-light blue eyes, or either simply dark (almost black) brown eyes, unfortunately in the case of brown eyes and the long exposure time this meant that the detail was simply not captured. [Something like this](http://www.rs.af.mil/shared/media/bio/hi_res/Cavenaugh.jpg) coupled with long exposure of maybe 20-100 seconds, and the unfortunate limitations of not only the equipment of the time, but also the process - as they relied heavily on light, anything dark would fade and become a blurry blob - this would mean brown eyes would make the subjects appear as if they were possessed by a demon, a lá Supernatural.
As mentioned earlier with the orthochromatic emulsion and generally outdated photography process, it would also turn some green-eyed folk very heavily towards the light blue side, and since I only have my own visual information to go on in most cases, and nothing contemporary, I have to guess between 3 things. 50% chance of hitting a blue eyed general, 50% chance of hitting a brown eyed general, and a small chance of hitting a green eyed general.
It becomes an issue in the end of whether or not I want to be historically accurate, or whether or not I want it to look good. Here's some examples of green-eyed generals I've done because I felt their eyes was too 'dark' in the photograph to really be blue eyed.
Edward Davis Townsend http://i5.minus.com/ii55ATWC9VtoL.jpg
Samuel B. Morse http://i1.minus.com/isa2M82OAjfID.jpg
Captain George W. Hackworth http://i1.minus.com/ibbbPK0BZian3L.jpg
President James Buchanan, who supposedly had heterochromia - which looked plausible since one eye was significantly darker than the other eye in the original B/W, even in direct sunlight http://i3.minus.com/ilwAkmUOimOF7.jpg
Here's some examples of 100% brown eyed officers verified by contemporary eyewitness accounts or simply by the fact that they have almost black eyes.
Henry Dwight Terry http://i5.minus.com/ib1GE3UF0IU6O1.jpg
Rufus Ingalls, having direct sunlight shining in to his eyes, lending to some great detail http://i7.minus.com/ifsXx4Hh4Q0mD.jpg
Henry Hobkins Sibley http://i4.minus.com/iilscRgcDzm3l.jpg
Famous ginger, William T. Sherman http://i6.minus.com/ibrPRhbOoPUOBI.jpg)
In summary, I've done lots of brown eyed people, but a multitude more blue eyed people as an aesthetic choice, but I never give someone blue eyes if I can tell that blue eyes is not even a slight possibility, not to say I haven't done so in the past when I was a newbie at this. I'm afraid to say that unless the person has any historical significance, he won't inspire the same feelings in me as seeing the clear blue-eyed gentleman right next to him.
The Civil War was a period of time when there was only around 31-35 million people, according to the 1860 census, accounting for mistakes. These people consisted primarily of Native Americans, some 4 million slaves, and natural born Americans. Most of these Americans consisted of Dutch, German, British, Scandinavian, and generally European people. A heavy number of European countries had blue eyes as their primary eye color even back in those days, and today with our 7 billion total people we have about a 50/50 split of blue and brown, with a small margin of green, yellow, golden, honey, whatever isn't classified as blue and brown inbetween.
The problem with this statistic is that there's 2 billion people in China and India alone (This is not accounting for South America and the Middle East), and 90% (if not more) of the population of India and China have brown eyes predominantly. Lending a large number of the human race to be favored heavily towards brown means that the countries without a predisposition to have brown eyes will have a much larger number of blue eyes than assumed before.
[Here's](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Light_Eyes_in_Europe.png) a good graph that shows the staggering amount of blue eyes in Europe, and most of the blue eyes immigrated to America back when people started settling it.
The reason a lot of people ask why there's a lot of blue eyes, is because I love eyes, they're by far my favorite feature on a human being, and when colorizing I always tend to favor a face with a nice set of clear blue eyes, and with the Civil War subjects being primarily focused on the North that didn't have much to do with 'breeding' with the slaves and the influx of mexicans and a heavy amount of Indians, you can understand how a lot of Northern generals tended to have blue eyes more-so than brown eyes, and I know a lot of Southern gentlemen went and signed up for the Union army, and rose to the rank of General.
This isn't to say everyone had blue eyes, and nobody had green eyes - It's just incredibly hard to find proper records and reliable contemporary eyewitness accounts of the appearance of people at the time. Back then, they didn't think to note someones eye color, but rather how he carried himself and how he was as a person, not the appearance so much. Unfortunately that's also why some people simply never got a photograph taken unless by the request of a family member or close friends.
Another problem we face is something called [orthochromatic emulsion](http://www.009.cd2.com/lynton_and_barnstaple_modelling/images/liveries2_img_0.jpg).
It wasn't a big issue until 1870-1880 when most of the Generals were photographed (Some of them got their photographs taken during the war, but it was incredibly silly to dispatch a General to New York or Washington to get a photograph taken by Mathew Brady in one of his studios, away from the front line), and 90% of all the Confederate photographs you see nowadays (Atleast of the higher ranking officers) are the works of Mathew Brady using the new orthochromatic process, which unfortunately dampened a lot of colors. The other photographs you see were traveling photographers in late 1861/early 1862, either photographed by someone like Alexander Gardner or Timothy O'Sullivan, predominantly, and with a traveling darkroom.
[This](http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cwpbh/03100/03106v.jpg) is a far stretch away from [this](http://www.spurlock.illinois.edu/collections/artifact/InfantryCoat/coat.jpg), wouldn't you say?
This also means that a lot of Generals either had baby-light blue eyes, or either simply dark (almost black) brown eyes, unfortunately in the case of brown eyes and the long exposure time this meant that the detail was simply not captured. [Something like this](http://www.rs.af.mil/shared/media/bio/hi_res/Cavenaugh.jpg) coupled with long exposure of maybe 20-100 seconds, and the unfortunate limitations of not only the equipment of the time, but also the process - as they relied heavily on light, anything dark would fade and become a blurry blob - this would mean brown eyes would make the subjects appear as if they were possessed by a demon, a lá Supernatural.
As mentioned earlier with the orthochromatic emulsion and generally outdated photography process, it would also turn some green-eyed folk very heavily towards the light blue side, and since I only have my own visual information to go on in most cases, and nothing contemporary, I have to guess between 3 things. 50% chance of hitting a blue eyed general, 50% chance of hitting a brown eyed general, and a small chance of hitting a green eyed general.
It becomes an issue in the end of whether or not I want to be historically accurate, or whether or not I want it to look good. Here's some examples of green-eyed generals I've done because I felt their eyes was too 'dark' in the photograph to really be blue eyed.
Edward Davis Townsend http://i5.minus.com/ii55ATWC9VtoL.jpg
Samuel B. Morse http://i1.minus.com/isa2M82OAjfID.jpg
Captain George W. Hackworth http://i1.minus.com/ibbbPK0BZian3L.jpg
President James Buchanan, who supposedly had heterochromia - which looked plausible since one eye was significantly darker than the other eye in the original B/W, even in direct sunlight http://i3.minus.com/ilwAkmUOimOF7.jpg
Here's some examples of 100% brown eyed officers verified by contemporary eyewitness accounts or simply by the fact that they have almost black eyes.
Henry Dwight Terry http://i5.minus.com/ib1GE3UF0IU6O1.jpg
Rufus Ingalls, having direct sunlight shining in to his eyes, lending to some great detail http://i7.minus.com/ifsXx4Hh4Q0mD.jpg
Henry Hobkins Sibley http://i4.minus.com/iilscRgcDzm3l.jpg
Famous ginger, William T. Sherman http://i6.minus.com/ibrPRhbOoPUOBI.jpg)
In summary, I've done lots of brown eyed people, but a multitude more blue eyed people as an aesthetic choice, but I never give someone blue eyes if I can tell that blue eyes is not even a slight possibility, not to say I haven't done so in the past when I was a newbie at this. I'm afraid to say that unless the person has any historical significance, he won't inspire the same feelings in me as seeing the clear blue-eyed gentleman right next to him.