Splendid patriotism: How the Illustrated London News pictured the Confederacy

• Published in: Comparative American studies Vol. 5; no. 4; pp. 385 - 407
• Main Author: Diffley, Kathleen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 01.12.2007
• Subjects: American Civil War; AMERICAN REVOLUTION; American studies; Blacks; BULL RUN; CONFEDERACY; England; GARIBALDI, GIUSEPPE; ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS; Italian unification; London; Patriotism; Political reform; Press; SLAVERY; Social change; STUART, J.E.B; U.S.A; United Kingdom; VIZETELLY, FRANK
• ISSN: 1477-5700; 1741-2676
• DOI: 10.1179/147757007X228181

At a time when newspaper reports from Richmond or Charleston were few and the Southern states remained mysterious in Europe, Frank Vizetelly's drawings helped give an international audience a way to see the stirrings of a would-be nation, while his commentary made it possible to read the conservative social order of the South against both the market enthusiasms of the North and the growing clamor for reform and wider suffrage in Britain itself. The problem of heterogeneity in Britain's domestic affairs thus made the American Civil War at once newsworthy and a virtual referendum on social change, particularly when the ILN printed the best pictorial coverage of the Confederacy. Invoking the recent wars in Italy, Vizetelly tied Confederate secession to Italian independence, but as a result he also insinuated the steadfast commitment to emancipation that had made Garibaldi the hero of London and the abolitionist North.