Free program at the Relic Room brings Civil War correspondent to life
October 29, 2019
Frank Vizetelly was a British correspondent who covered the American Civil War for The Illustrated London News from a decidedly Southern point of view.
On Friday, Nov. 8, at noon at the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum in Columbia, Mr. Vizetelly will deliver a free public lecture about his wartime experiences.
Or rather, a reasonable facsimile of Mr. Vizetelly will do so.
Actually, the speaker will be fellow Englishman Howard Burnham. Born in Bournemouth, England, Mr. Burnham has his own connection to America’s “late unpleasantness.” Part American through his paternal grandfather, he had a namesake – 1st Lt. Howard Burnham, United States Army – who was killed on the first day at Chickamauga.
He has appeared as Vizetelly, ace war reporter, for several years at a variety of venues, including Shiloh Military Park, Manassas Battlefield and the South Carolina State Museum.
The man he will portray started out covering both sides of the Civil War, until he was forbidden access to the Union Army after Federal authorities saw his illustration of Northern troops fleeing in panic at the First Battle of Bull Run.
So he went south, and as Mr. Burnham puts it, “As soon as he crossed the Potomac, he fell for Southern charm,” becoming completely sympathetic to the Confederate cause.
From then on, Vizetelly reported from a Southern perspective, becoming so thoroughly embedded with the Confederacy that he accompanied Jefferson Davis as he fled from Federal authorities after Robert E. Lee’s surrender. A famous illustration he did of Davis on the run was drawn just days before he was captured.
Vizetelly went on to cover other trouble spots after his time in America. Finally, he disappeared, and was presumed killed, during the massacre of Hicks Pasha’s army in Sudan – not long before the demise of Charles George “Chinese” Gordon at Khartoum.
Mr. Burnham took honors in Modern History at University College in the University of Durham. He has worked as an actor, educator and museum curator, and in 1973, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London. He lived in Columbia from 1998 to 2013, when he and his family moved to California.
He has portrayed quite a few historical and cultural figures over the years, including Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Ban Tarleton, Tom Paine, Horatio Gates, Thomas Sumter, Charles Pinckney, Robert Louis Stevenson, Winston Churchill, Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, King James VI & I, and Ian Fleming of James Bond fame.
About the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum
Founded in 1896, the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum is an accredited museum focusing on South Carolina’s distinguished martial tradition through the Revolutionary War, Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, Vietnam, the War on Terror, and other American conflicts. It serves as the state’s military history museum by collecting, preserving, and exhibiting South Carolina’s military heritage from the colonial era to the present, and by providing superior educational experiences and programming. It is located at 301 Gervais St. in Columbia, sharing the Columbia Mills building with the State Museum. For more information, go to https://crr.sc.gov/.
