Born in Boston and trained as a journalist on the Boston Herald and the New York Herald, Felix Gregory de Fontaine became one of the South's leading war correspondents. Although he apparently had no ties to the South before the war began, after he arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, to cover the firing on Fort Sumter for his Southern-sympathizing employer, James Gordon Bennett, de Fontaine became and remained loyal to the Southern cause. He endured illness and danger while reporting the war, and he remained optimistic about the Confederacy even after the South's demise was ensured.

De Fontaine, along with Peter W. Alexander of the Savannah (Ga.) Republican, "stood head and shoulders" above other correspondents in the South, according to J. Cutler Andrews, author of The South Reports the Civil War. While the source of de Fontaine's Southern sympathy was not recorded, most European nations sympathized with the...