This card-photograph … tells the story in a way that even Mrs. Stowe cannot … because it tells the story to the eye.
Weeks after Gere’s letter about Peter’s photograph appeared in the May 5, 1863 edition of the Gazette, news of the image began to spread. The exact path the image traveled to the national news is unknown.
We received from Baton Rouge the photographic likeness of a slave's naked back, lacerated by the whip [...] We look on the picture with amazement that cannot find words for utterance. Amazement at the cruelty which could perpetrate such an outrage as this; at the brutal folly, the stupid ignorance, that could permit such a piece of infatuation; at the absence not only of humane feeling, but of economical prudence of common sense, of ordinary intelligence, displayed in such frantic thoughtlessness. Among what sort of people are such things possible? [...] This card-photograph should be multiplied by the hundred thousand, and scattered over the states. It tells the story in a way that even Mrs. Stowe cannot approach; because it tells the story to the eye. If seeing is believing — and it is in the immense majority of cases — seeing this card would be equivalent to believing things of the slave states which Northern men and women would move heaven and earth to abolish!
The Independent (New York), May 28, 1863
Weeks after Gere’s letter about Peter’s photograph appeared in the May 5, 1863 edition of the Gazette, news of the image began to spread. The exact path the image traveled to the national news is unknown.
We received from Baton Rouge the photographic likeness of a slave's naked back, lacerated by the whip [...] We look on the picture with amazement that cannot find words for utterance. Amazement at the cruelty which could perpetrate such an outrage as this; at the brutal folly, the stupid ignorance, that could permit such a piece of infatuation; at the absence not only of humane feeling, but of economical prudence of common sense, of ordinary intelligence, displayed in such frantic thoughtlessness. Among what sort of people are such things possible? [...] This card-photograph should be multiplied by the hundred thousand, and scattered over the states. It tells the story in a way that even Mrs. Stowe cannot approach; because it tells the story to the eye. If seeing is believing — and it is in the immense majority of cases — seeing this card would be equivalent to believing things of the slave states which Northern men and women would move heaven and earth to abolish!
The Independent (New York), May 28, 1863