An escaped slave named Peter showing his scarred back at a medical examination in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1863. The Harper’s spread referred to Peter as possessing “unusual intelligence and energy,” laying bare stereotypes of black people as stupid and lazy. The image was a powerful rebuttal to the lie that enslaved people were treated humanely, a common refrain of those who didn’t think slavery should be abolished. Not much is known about Peter aside from the testimony he gave the medical examiners at the camp and the image of his back and the keloid scars he suffered from his beating. All Rights Reserved. One was Robert E Lee. “What began as a very local — even private — image ultimately achieved something much grander because it circulated so widely,” historian Bruce Laurie told the Boston Globe. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. An unnamed Union Army soldier who had taken the photographs shot back with a long account that upheld the veracity of the photograph. By the time he made it to a Union encampment in Baton Rouge in March 1863, Peter had been through hell. The marks extended from his buttocks to his shoulders, calling to mind the viciousness and power with which he had been beaten. “Masters desired to maintain order in a society in which they were in unquestionable positions of authority,” he writes.
The surviving escapees rubbed onions on their bodies to escape the bloodhounds the slave catchers used to pursue them. During Peter's enslavement on John and Bridget Lyons’ Louisiana plantation, Peter endured not just the indignity of slavery, but a brutal whipping that nearly took his life.
Others who had escaped from slavery, like Frederick Douglass, posed for popular portraits.
They immediately enlisted.
READ MORE: How Many Presidents Owned Enslaved People? A surgeon who was present at his examination noted that “nothing in his appearance indicates any unusual viciousness,” as if anything could justify a whipping.
It was sold by abolitionists who used it to raise money for their cause, and gained the name “The Scourged Back” or “Whipped Peter.” When it was published in Harper’s Weekly, the most popular periodical of its day, it reached a massive audience. Peter's disfigured back helped bring the stakes of the Civil War to life, contradicting Southerners’ insistence that their slaveholding was a matter of economic survival, not racism. Mercer, a Union Army surgeon in Louisiana, wrote on the back of the card. How Many Presidents Owned Enslaved People.
For white Northerners, though, Peter’s scourged body made slavery's brutality impossible to deny. Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Sojourner Truth even used the proceeds from the cartes de visites she sold at her speeches to fund speaking tours and help recruit black soldiers. Peter and three other enslaved people escaped by cover of night, but one of their companions was murdered by slave hunters who came in pursuit of Lyons’ property. The small cards were cheap to produce and became wildly popular during the Civil War, providing a near-instant look at the war, and its players, as it unfolded.
Marsh. He told examiners that he had left the plantation ten days ago, and that the man who whipped him was the plantation’s overseer, Artayou Carrier. Each of the U.S. slave states was about the same in terms of how they treated slaves. The number of lashes which were always many depended on the seriousness of the offence. Slaves, on the other hand, through their victimization and punishment, viewed the whip as the physical manifestation of their oppression under slavery.”. Though slavery had been abolished, he—and the others who had been subjugated, beaten and demeaned during hundreds of years of slavery in the Americas—still bore the scars of enslavement. “They used the whip as a tool to enforce this vision of society. Next Page Tags 10 Largest Slave owners American Slavery biggest slave masters History of …
“All the logic of the blind and infatuated believers in Human Slavery cannot arrest or thwart the progress of truth, any more than they can prevent the development of the positive picture, when aided by the silent and powerful process of chemical action,” he wrote. The widely circulated image of Peter's wounds helped turn white Northerners against slavery.
The disturbing snaps resurfaced today, on the 153rd anniversary of the 13th amendmen… “This Card Photograph should be multiplied by 100,000, and scattered over the States,” an anonymous journalist wrote. It Just Surfaced. The white soldiers who inspected Peter were horrified by his wounds. Slaves were whipped daily; it must not necessarily be when they have committed a serious offence, … “Suiting the action to the word, he pulled down the pile of dirty rags that half concealed his back,” said a witness. After the whipping, he was told he had become “sort of crazy” and had threatened his wife. THESE shocking photographs from more than 150 years ago reveal the brutal reality suffered by slaves in America.
And for thousands of white people, it was a shocking image that helped fuel the fires of abolition during the Civil War. As soon as the carte de visite was introduced in 1854, the technology became popular in abolitionist circles. And when he joined the Union Army after his escape from slavery, Peter exposed his scars during a medical examination. But his ten-day ordeal was nothing compared to what he had already been through. Only after days of pursuit did they reach the Union encampment, weeping with joy when they were greeted by black men in uniform. It’s unclear what Peter did during the rest of the war, or what his life was like after the Civil War came to an end.
READ MORE: How Sally Hemings and Other Enslaved People Secured Precious Pockets of Freedom. Mass media was still relatively new, and though escaped slaves and other eyewitnesses brought stories of whippings and other punishments north, few had seen the evidence of the oppression of slaves. He sent it to Colonel L.B. He had been pursued for miles, had run barefoot through creeks and across fields. A photograph of Peter’s back became one of the most widely circulated images of slavery of its time, galvanizing public opinion and serving as a wordless indictment of the institution of slavery.
Raised welts and strafe marks crisscrossed his back. Who when named executor of the Custis estate, decided to break the plantation tradition of not selling families apart from each other and within 5 short years had sold apart every family but one.
It was a hideous constellation of scars: visual proof of the brutality of slavery.
READ MORE: The Last Slave Ship Survivor Gave an Interview in the 1930s.
Despite the racism of the day, though, Peter’s portrait did galvanize even those who had never spoken out against slavery. And it showed just how important mass media was during the war that nearly destroyed the United States. It remains one of the era’s best known—and most appalling—images. McPherson and Oliver, two itinerant photographers who were at the camp, photographed Peter’s back, and the photo was reproduced and distributed as a carte-de-visite, a trendy new photographic format.
For white Southerners and enslaved black people, the sight of a back like Peter’s was chillingly commonplace. Bloodhounds had chased him. FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness.
Brutal Whipping.
It Just Surfaced. But Peter’s strafed back was perhaps the most visible—and significant—photograph of a former slave. John Cummings, a New Orleans lawyer and preservationist, has spent 16 years and nearly $8 million of his own money creating Whitney Plantation, which … As historian Michael Dickman notes, whipping was a common punishment on Southern plantations, though there was a debate about whether to use it sparingly to keep slaves from revolting. As he lay in bed recovering, the plantation owner fired the overseer. The spread also stoked confusion when Peter’s name was listed instead as “Gordon.”. “I have found a large number of the four hundred or so contrabands [people who had escaped slavery and were now protected by the Union Army] examined by me to be as badly lacerated as the specimen represented in the enclosed photograph,” J.W.
Peter was not the only runaway slave whose image helped stoke anti-slavery sentiments. Though Peter’s body was used as proof of the cruelty of slavery, accounts of his ordeal are saturated with the racism that pervaded American society, even among sympathetic white Northerners.
Three illustrations showing Peter after his escape, the welts from being whipped upon his back, and in uniform after he had joined the Union Army, featured in McPherson and Oliver in July, 1863. The photo was also decried as fake by the Copperheads, a nickname for a faction of Northerners who opposed the war and was loudly sympathetic of the South and of slave ownership. How Sally Hemings and Other Enslaved People Secured Precious Pockets of Freedom, The Last Slave Ship Survivor Gave an Interview in the 1930s. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! During Peter's enslavement on John and Bridget Lyons’ Louisiana plantation, Peter endured not just the indignity of slavery, but a brutal whipping that nearly took his life.
In 1850, Ward controlled six large plantations and produced 3.9 million pounds of rice.
The main method used to control the behaviour of slaves was the threat of having them whipped.
But though Peter’s experience was shared by thousands of enslaved people, it was foreign to many Northerners who had never witnessed slavery and its brutality with their own eyes. When he reached the soldiers, Peter’s clothing was ragged and soaked with mud and sweat. “It sent a thrill of horror to every white person present, but the few Blacks who were waiting…paid but little attention to the sad spectacle, such terrible scenes being painfully familiar to them all.”. Peter’s photo quickly spread across the nation.
He had survived, if barely. But Peter had already determined to escape. © 2020 A&E Television Networks, LLC. The whippings and beatings were usually so horrific and as bad as you could ever imagine.
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