“Loyal Slaves” and Campfire Entertainment in Frank Vizetelly’s Confederate Camp

Frank Vizetelly’s illustration titled “Night Amusements in the Confederate Camp” appeared in the Illustrated London News on January 10, 1863. It was one among a number of wartime scenes that Vizetelly captured for the newspaper.

Following the war, the illustration appeared in a number of books, including John O. Casler’s Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade (1893) and Campfires of the Confederacy (1898) by Ben La Bree.

The scene depicts a Confederate camp at night with an enslaved man, most likely a camp servant, performing a dance around a fire with the music provided by a soldier playing a banjo. Another enslaved man looks on at the right.

Vizetelly likely witnessed the scene—one that would have been common throughout the war. It’s a wonderful example of the way in which Confederates—slaveowners and nonslaveowners alike—experienced the presence of slave labor in the army. Vizetelly was deeply sympathetic to the Confederate cause. His depiction of the enslaved man as more than happy to entertain the very people who were fighting to keep him enslaved was precisely the kind of image designed to reassure a British audience that slavery was benign, and by implication, that Britain need not feel morally troubled about recognizing or supporting the Confederacy.

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Just as importantly, the sight of a dancing slave reassured Confederates themselves that the institution of slavery remained secure even after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

I’ve come across this illustration many times before and I plan on using it in my next book project on the role of enslaved labor in the Confederate army during the Gettysburg Campaign, but this is not the reason I am sharing it with you today.

It has to do with where I recently found it, which came as a complete surprise and is incredibly revealing.

Let’s take a look.