Genre:

News-Commentary

Subjects:

Hospitals, Politics, Race

    Discusses the secession of Louisiana from the United States of America, which led to the seizure of a hospital (and expulsion of the patients) near New Orleans by military personnel so that it might be used as a barracks by Louisiana state troops. Punch notes that a leading American statesman condemned this action as barbaric, but then points out that 'what are the savage secessionist slave-owners of Louisiana but barbarians' and that 'Mercilessness to black slaves is simply consistent with cruelty to white sufferers [the patients]'.