'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)
'The Principal Church in Charleston, South Carolina' by Eyre Crowe (1861)
Medium: pen and ink, engraved
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 in February 1861, the Illustrated London News printed a series of engravings 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’, published on 2 February; ‘Selling Sweet Potatoes in Charleston’, showing female slaves engaged in this activity, also published on 2 February; and a sketch of the principal church in Charleston, published on 16 February. The sketches were based on sketches made by Crowe during his visit to Charleston in 1853.
On 26 July 1862, an essay by Crowe describing the town of Richmond, Virginia, together with a general sketch view of the area, also appeared in the Illustrated London News. [not shown here].
Eyre Crowe (1824-1910) 