Frank Vizetelly
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30 July 2022
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. This week I picked up another book I inherited from my father's library and found it stamped with Ft. Sumpter, Nov. 30 2012. I had Thanksgiving that year with friends while my family traveled to Maryland as became our habit after that. His father, my grandfather, stamped all his books with a personalized name and address. I picked up the habit from grandpa and I think my dad picked it up from me after our Yellowstone trip in 2000. My son Maxwell, as far as I know, does not similarly mark his books, but he's more of an audiobook guy. Douglas Bostick dedicated his book on Frank Vizetelly, The Confederacy's Secret Weapon, to his son. This was another irony of the week. Maxwell, who just turned 19, was just in Maryland with his mom but didn't tell me beforehand; instead he left me to wonder why he wasn't working and wasn't interested in taking a trip in late July with his dad. Poor kid is caught between a father who loves him and a mother who still controls his worldview and certainly doesn't want me around. My own dad never made it back to Yellowstone, even for the family reunion we had there in 2015. Apples actually evolved in central Asia (likely in the hills above Almaty, Kazakhstan) to be eaten by bears that scattered their seeds far from the tree in their dung.
Bostick's book on Vizetelly is written for someone already well steeped in the history of the Lost Cause. It's instructive that while he was sent to cover the the Union army as a journalist they kicked him out for unfavorably reporting battles they lost. Crossing the lines to travel with the Confederate army instead, he fell in with their cause like he had with Garibaldi's, who he covered earlier, following even Jefferson Davis' flight after Lee's surrender. He was an illustrator in the last days before photography replaced drawings in the papers. Bostick's book presents his story with only scant explanation of the war he covered, but if it is already familiar territory to the reader then this addition will only enrich that knowledge.
