Gordon (slave)

Gordon during the troop examination at Camp Parapet near Baton Rouge on April 2, 1863 with a medical note on the back of August 4, 1863

Gordon , also Whipped Peter ( German  Geseitschter Peter , proven 1863 ), was an enslaved African American whose scarred back, caused by being hit with a leather whip, was photographed by William D. McPherson (approx. 1833-1867) and his partner Oliver. This photo gained fame, initially as a woodcut , through its first publication in Harper's Weekly on July 4, 1863 and is still considered to be one of the world's first propaganda photos (here: war propaganda of the northern states ) because it was used by advocates of abolitionism politically in support of the abolition of the Slavery was used in the United States . The image also initiated a pastor's contemporary poem.

Life

It is conceivable that "Peter Gordon" was the full name of the depicted slave, a name given by the original slave owner. In order to be able to address slaves, owners of slaves sometimes gave arbitrary first names and added their own real family names to indicate their total right of possession and disposal. In this way, captured slaves could often be quickly identified by their name and brought to the owner by the finder or catcher. In St. Landry Parish , Louisiana , there were two slave-owner families called Gordon at the time. One of these two families could have sold Peter Gordon to John and Bridget Lyons, the owners of a 12 km² cotton plantation on the Atchafalaya River , who also lived there . At least that is what records from the US National Archives suggest. Another theory is that his name Gordon was derived from the slave trader Nathaniel Gordon (1826-1862), who was hanged in New York City. The name given to the slave, let alone the actual name, played no role whatsoever in the media exploitation or in the political debate.

Martyrdom and Flight

Gordon in March 1863 Camp Parapet of Union troops

Gordon was one of just under forty slaves Lyons had bought since the 1860 census . In the absence of his owner, Gordon was flogged by the supervisor Artayou Carrier, who was therefore later released. Gordon could not remember the process itself, but was not able to work for two months afterwards. He was told that he burned his clothes as if in a fever and wanted to shoot around. However, no one was killed or even injured.

In the spring of 1863, the course of the Civil War offered countless slaves a life-threatening, but also hopeful, opportunity: to flee behind the front line of the Union troops .

Within ten days, Gordon had managed to cover more than 120 kilometers (80 miles). He was able to distract the highly sensitive noses of the bloodhounds hunting him by rubbing his whole body with onions every time he crossed a stream or swamp.

Five months after his appearance at Camp Parapet of Colonel Nathan Dudley (1825-1910) commanded the 30th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (= 30th Infantry Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers ) near Baton Rouge , Louisiana , he was examined in detail on August 4, 1863 by a military doctor . The surgeon SK Towle found a causal connection with the severe injuries suffered, finger-thick keloids , benign tumors, which stretch across the entire back . Towle described Gordon to his colleague and superior Brigadier-General William J. Dale, Surgeon-General of the State of Massachusetts: Few sensationalists have ever described punishments worse than that received by this man [Gordon] . Nevertheless, nothing in its appearance indicates any unusual malice. Instead, he appears intelligent and well-behaved. ("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"). Gordon, however, was only one of about four hundred medically examined blacks, most of whom had similar injuries, as noted by fellow examining surgical assistant FW Mercer.

military service

Three months later, Gordon served in the Union Army, after the Emancipation Proclamation came into force at the beginning of the year , as a result of which released slaves could be used in the armed forces of the northern states. In the course of a military operation he fell into the hands of the other side, the Confederate troops , was knocked unconscious and then pronounced dead. Later he came to, was able to flee and make his way to the Union troops again. A little later he joined the United States Colored Troops , founded in May 1863 , where he was promoted to sergeant . It was certified that he fought valiantly. He was later used in the Corps d'Afrique , which was involved in the Battle of Port Hudson in the summer of 1863 .

Media reception

Harper's Weekly , Vol. VII, No. 340. July 4, 1863, p. 429. (high-resolution file, easy to read)

The scars seen on his back shocked proponents and opponents of slavery alike. The journalist of a newspaper wrote in 1863 that even Harriet Beecher Stowe , the author of the (by now world-famous) novel Onkel Toms Hütte , could not have described the wounds more vividly than this photo shows.

Abolitionists, advocates of the abolition of slavery, saw his scars as a symbol of slavery written in the flesh. According to The Independent , the man's back is the archetype of the slave system and the society that sustains it ("the type of the slave system, and of the society that sustains it"). For Harper's Weekly he was "a typical Negro", while The Liberator simply referred to him as "the Louisiana Negro". His function as living proof was far more important than he was as a person. The scars counted; his personality was ignored. For a large part of the people of the northern states, too, a black person was mostly just a thing, a good. A mixed army regiment was therefore far from taking place and black regiments were always commanded by whites.

Web links

Commons : Gordon (slave)  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ McPherson, William D., ca. 1833-1867 . In: Yale University Library Catalog , JWJ MSS 50, on: yale.edu
   "Peter" Showing Whipping Scars . In: Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs , Record Group 165, Photograph 165-JT-230, National Archives Identifier: 533232, National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} A Typical Negro . Harper's Weekly , Vol. VII, No. 340, Jul 4, 1863, p. 429. In: The News Media and the Making of America, 1730-1865 , at americanantiquarian.org
3. ↑ Kathleen Collins: The Scourged Back . In: History of Photography , Vol. 9, Jan.-March 1985, pp. 43-45.
   Joan Paulson Gage: A Slave Named Gordon . In: The New York Times , September 30, 2009, at: nytimes.com
   John Dewar Gleissner: Prison and Slavery - A Surprising Comparison . Outskirts Press, Parker, Colorado, 2010. ISBN 978-1-4327-5383-2 , pp. 165.
4. ↑ Marcus Wood: Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America, 1780-1865 . Manchester University Press, 2000. p. 268.
   Brian Wallis: Black Bodies, White Science: Louis Agassiz's Slave Daguerreotypes (PDF file; 7.6 MB). In: American Art , Vol. 9, No. 2 (Summer 1995), pp. 38-61., Smithsonian American Art Museum (Ed.), The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1995, p. 53.
   A Picture For The Times . In: The Liberator (Boston, Massachusetts), July 3, 1863, p. 3.
   The Sourged Slave's Back . In: The Liberator (Boston, Massachusetts), Sep. 4, 1863, p. 3.
5. ^ Rev. George Lansing Taylor: The Scourged Back . In: National Anti-Slavery Standard , September 26, 1863, p. 4, column 1, at: scolarlyediting.org.
6. ↑ ^{a b c d} Margaret Abruzzo: Polemical Pain. Slavery, Cruelty, and the Rise of Humanitarianism . Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland, 2011. ISBN 978-0-8018-9852-5 , pp. 203, 309.
7. ^ The 1860 slave schedules of the federal census include SJC Gordon as owner of forty slaves and MM Gordon as owner of thirty-six slaves (St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, National Archives Microfilm Publication M653, Roll 431). Quoted from: Margaret Abruzzo, 2011.
8. ↑ Captain John Lyons of St Landry Parish ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Lyons Index, on: shawra.com 
9. ↑ Ten days from today I left the plantation . In: HistoryLink101, on: historylink101.com (English)
   David Silkenat: "A Typical Negro". Gordon, Peter, Vincent Colyer, and the Story behind Slavery's Most Famous Photograph . In: American Nineteenth Century History , Vol. 15, 2014, Issue 2, pp. 169–186.
10. ↑ Georg Schild: From Slavery to the Civil Rights Movement: Racial Relations in America, 1770 to 1945 . In: Michael Butter, Astrid Franke, Horst Tonn (eds.): From Selma to Ferguson - Race and Racism in the USA . transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2016. ISBN 978-3-8394-3503-8 . Pp. 47-71. (Quotation p. 47-48)
11. ↑ The 30th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry camped from August 1 to September 2, 1863 at Baton Rouge. In: National Park Service, The Civil War, on: nps.gov
    Handwritten note on the back of the severely damaged back of Gordon photographed on April 2, 1863: “Camp Parapet, LA, Aug. 4, 1863. I have found a large number of the four hundred contrabands examined by me to be as badly lacerated as the specimen represented in the enclosed photograph. Very respectfully, Yours, FW Mercer, Asst. Surgeon, 47th MV FacSimile of Original Report to Col. LB Marsh. ”(= Camp Parapet, Louisiana, August 4, 1863. A large number of the 400 contraband examined by me were as badly torn as the subject in the enclosed photo Yours, FW Mercer, Resident, 47th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Faithful copy of report to Colonel LB Marsh [39th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment]). Explanation of the term contraband: During the war of secession, black slaves from the southern states were generally referred to as smuggled goods by the Union Army, like material goods, if they had crossed the front line.
    The 47th Regiment, Massachusetts Infantry (Militia) camped in Camp Parapet , Louisiana until August 1863 . In: National Park Service, The Civil War, Battle Unit Details, on: nps.gov
12. ^ Sharon Block: Colonial Complexions: Race and Bodies in Eighteenth-Century America (= Early American Studies). University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2018. ISBN 978-0-8122-5006-0 , p. 129.
    Neha Jariwala and Jules B. Lipoff: The Keloid Scars of Slavery . In: JAMA Dermatology , Vol. 152, No. 10, October 2016.
13. ^ Mary Niall Mitchell, Raising Freedom's Child: Black Children and Visions of the Future After Slavery . P. 252.
14. ^ Cassandra Jackson: Violence, Visual Culture, and the Black Male Body . NYU Press, New York City, NY, 2008. ISBN 978-0-8147-9570-5 , p. 14.
15. ^ Peter E. Palmquist, Thomas R. Kailbourn: Pioneer Photographers from the Mississippi to the Continental Divide. A Biographical Dictionary, 1839-1865 . Stanford University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 2005. ISBN 978-0-8047-4057-9 , p. 431.
16. ↑ The Scourged Back , quotation: "It tells the story in a way that even Mrs. Stowe cannot approach, because it tells the story to the eye". In: The New York Independent , May 28, 1863. Quoted from: Andrew R. Hom et al .: Moral Victories: The Ethics of Winning Wars . Oxford University Press, New York City, NY, 2017. ISBN 978-0-19-880182-5 , p. 152.