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The Confederacy did not possess the necessary resources for publishing any illustrated paper comparable to Frank Leslie's or Harper's Weekly. Although few southerners ever saw it, the Illustrated London News supplied pictorial coverage from the southern perspective. Its artist-correspondent Frank Vizetelly covered the war behind Confederate lines from the 1861 Battle of Bull Run to the surrender of Richmond in 1865. We don't know if Vizetelly supplied the sketches for the British weekly's pictorial coverage of the draft riots. But, in contrast to the Republican Harper's Weekly, the Illustrated London News's depiction of the destruction of the Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue and 45th Street during the afternoon of Monday, July 13, 1863, emphasized the social inequality in northern society that contributed to the riot. Showing the rioters without animal-like features, the engraving focused on their looting of the Asylum's furniture and other household items that many poor New Yorkers could not afford. |
Draft Riots 1863 - Colored Orphan Asylum
