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865.01 Portrait > Portrait: Parts of the body: Back: Single person
                            
865.02 Portrait > The scourged back
   
An albumen print taken in March or April 1963 shows Gordon, a runaway African American slave, with his back scourged by whip marks. There are few photographs that show the reality of slave live in the American South and the horrors are increasing shown in film.[1]
Gordon ran away a Mississippi plantation to a Union camp in Baton Rouge about 80 miles away during the American Civil War. He enlisted into the Union Army and his medical exam showed his appallingly scared back. The whipping to his back had taken place in the fall of 1862 for undisclosed reasons was so extreme that it was photographed. The photograph is generally known by two titles The Scourged Back and Gordon, A Runaway Mississippi Slave and the photograph is attributed to William D. McPherson & Oliver who were itinerant photographers operating out of New Orleans and Baton Rouge in Louisiana who were in the camp at the time. Samuel K. Towle, a surgeon with the 30th Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteers, sent a copy to the Surgeon-General of the State of Massachusetts with the accompanying text:
Few sensation writers ever depicted worse punishments than this man must have received, though nothing in his appearance indicates any unusual viciousness—but on the contrary, he seems INTELLIGENT AND WELL-BEHAVED.[2]
The photograph had propaganda significance to the Abolitionist movement in America as it was undeniable evidence of inhuman cruelty. On the 4th July 1863, which was the day Vicksburg fell, a wood engraving was published in the widely distributed magazine Harper's Weekly[3]. It was also printed as part of the title page of Fanny Kemble's book The Views of Judge Woodward and Bishop Hopkins on Negro Slavery at the South.[4] The power of the photograph was appreciated at the time as one source said:
This Card Photograph should be multiplied by 100,000, and scattered over the States. It tells the story in a way that even Mrs. [Harriet Beecher] Stowe [author of the 1852 book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin] can not approach, because it tells the story to the eye.[5]
Photographers, including Mathew Brady, in the North copied the photograph and included it on their own carte de visite mounts. Little is known about Gordon's subsequent life but this photograph and the way it was used was evidence of the injustice, and barbarity, that was a part of slavery.
865.03 Portrait > Portrait: Parts of the body: Back: Groups
                  
865.04 Portrait > Front and back view portraits
                
Footnotes
- Λ Films on the African American slave experience include - Django Unchained (2012), Twelve Years a Slave (2013).
List of films featuring slavery - Wikipedia
(Accessed: 24 January 2014)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_featuring_slavery
- Λ Quoted in Frank H. Goodyear, III, "Photography changes the way we record and respond to social issues"
(Accessed: 24 January 2014)
click.si.edu/Story.aspx?story=297
- Λ The photograph of the "Scourged back" was published as a wood engraving in - 4 July 1863, Harper's Weekly, p. 429, bottom.
Library of Congress, "Gordon as he entered our lines. Gordon under medical inspection. Gordon in his uniform as a U.S. soldier", Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-98515 (b&w film copy neg.), Call Number: Illus. in AP2.H32 Case Y [P&P]
- Λ The engraving was also used on the title page of Frances Kemble, 1863, The Views of Judge Woodward and Bishop Hopkins on Negro Slavery at the South, Illustrated from the Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation by Mrs Frances Anne Kemble, [Philadelphia? : s.n.]
A film has been made Enslavement: The True Story of Fanny Kemble (2000) on the abolitionist work of Fanny Kemble.
- Λ An unidentified writer for the New York Independent - quoted in Frank H. Goodyear, III, "Photography changes the way we record and respond to social issues"
(Accessed: 24 January 2014)
click.si.edu/Story.aspx?story=297
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