Eyre Crowe (1824-1910)

‘Slave auction at Richmond, Virginia’ by Eyre Crowe (1856)

‘Negro expulsion from railway car, Philadelphia’ by Eyre Crowe (1856)

‘Close of business at Wall Street, New York’ by Eyre Crowe (1856)

‘Slaves waiting for sale, Virginia’ by Eyre Crowe (1856)

‘The Negro Reveillee’ by Eyre Crowe (1856)

‘The Secession Movement – Entrance Hall to an hotel at Charleston, South Carolina’ by Eyre Crowe (1861)

‘Selling Sweet Potatoes in Charleston’ by Eyre Crowe (1861)

‘High Street, Richmond, Virginia’ by Eyre Crowe (c.1862)

Medium: pen and ink, engraved

Crowe published a long article, ‘Sketches in the Free and Slave States in America’ in The Illustrated London News on 27 September 1856, accompanied by 11 of his own pen and ink sketches: ‘Taking an after-dinner whiff at Charleston, Carolina’, ‘General Cass in the Senate, Washington’, ‘Glimpse of ‘Change, New York’, ‘Negro Expulsion from railway car, Philadelphia’, ‘Close of business at Wall-Street, New York’, ‘Young America, Boston’, ‘Theodore Parker lecturing in New York’, ‘Slave Auction at Richmond, Virginia‘, ‘Baltimore, Maryland’, ‘Slaves Waiting for Sale, Virginia‘, and ‘The Negro Reveillee, Charlestown’. The article explained the differences between North and South, and the slave trade within America, and described Crowe’s horror at witnessing an auction: ‘No pen, we think, can adequately delineate the choking sense of horror which overcomes one on first witnessing these degrading spectacles’.

The first shots in the U.S. Civil War were fired in April 1861, after a long period of growing tension. The previous year, South Carolina had seceded from the Union, and Abraham Lincoln was elected as President. Readers of newspapers in Great Britain were interested in the worsening situation across the Atlantic, and on 2 February 1861, the Illustrated London News printed a series of engraved sketches of scenes by Eyre Crowe depicting some of the localities now being talked of.

The engravings were ‘The Secession Movement – Entrance Hall to an hotel at Charleston, South Carolina’, ‘The Charleston Palmetto’, and ‘Selling Sweet Potatoes in Charleston’, showing female slaves engaged in this activity. The sketches were based on sketches made by Crowe during his visit to Charleston in 1853.

On 26 July 1862, a brief description of the town of Richmond, Virginia, and the location of the slave auction houses was published together with a sketch of the main street. Captioned ‘The Civil War in America: High Street, Richmond, Virginia’, it was intended to assist British readers in visualising the locations they were reading about in the news.