Chaotic Freedom and the Scars of Slavery: From Baton Rouge to Northampton
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This website exhibit is based upon the book "Chaotic Freedom" in Civil War Louisiana:
The Origins of an Iconic Image (University of Massachusetts Press, 2021) by historian Bruce Laurie. |
"But for the unmistakeable evidence which he bore upon his back, I could not have believed his story."
- Excerpt from Army Correspondence. From the 52d Regiment. Correspondence of the Gazette & Courier. Baton Rouge, April 6, 1863.
This carte-de-visite photograph of a formerly enslaved man named Peter was taken in Louisiana in April 1863. In late March 1863, Peter fled slavery on a Louisiana plantation to find freedom at an encampment of the Union Army in Baton Rouge. Days after gaining his freedom, he sat for this photograph.
The image of his scourged back reached a national audience when a woodcut engraving made from the image appeared on the pages of Harper’s Weekly magazine on July 4, in 1863. The photograph changed public opinion about slavery and the war and became one of the most iconic images of slavery in the United States.
Who was Peter? What happened to him when he resisted slavery?
How did he achieve his freedom? Why and how did he pose for this photograph which became an instrument of change? What happened when a white northern audience saw the scars on his back?
How did he achieve his freedom? Why and how did he pose for this photograph which became an instrument of change? What happened when a white northern audience saw the scars on his back?
Peter was one among thousands of enslaved individuals who liberated themselves from slavery by entering the Baton Rouge camp. What was life like for self-emancipated people, like Peter, during the Civil War? Two soldiers from western Massachusetts - Henry Gere of Northampton, MA and Marshall Stearns of Northfield, MA - witnessed life after escaping slavery as it unfolded in the spring of 1863. Gere called the situation that Peter and thousands like him faced in Civil War Louisiana “chaotic freedom.”
In the fall of 1862, Marshall Stearns (1824-1902) and Henry S. Gere (1828-1914) began a nine-month term of service with the 52nd Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers. After the 52nd landed in Baton Rouge in mid-December 1862, Stearns was appointed Superintendent of Negro Labor and Gere was made regimental postmaster. They were effectively noncombatants, spared the worst of the war, likely because both men were older. Gere, age 38 and Stearns, age 34.
Peter arrived at the Union army camp where Gere and Stearns served. Gere and Stearns played a role in the creation of this photograph. Both men sent letters North describing what they witnessed when thousands of formerly enslaved people entered the Baton Rouge camp. A journalist, Gere wrote long reports of his wartime experience for publication in the Hampshire Gazette, a Northampton newspaper.
In his "Letters from the 52nd" published in the Hampshire Gazette on May 5, 1863, Gere informed readers in western Massachusetts that he sent the photograph of Peter to Northampton and invited people to view the image at a bookstore on Main Street. Here are their observations and thoughts of the situation they encountered as best we can reconstruct it.
Peter arrived at the Union army camp where Gere and Stearns served. Gere and Stearns played a role in the creation of this photograph. Both men sent letters North describing what they witnessed when thousands of formerly enslaved people entered the Baton Rouge camp. A journalist, Gere wrote long reports of his wartime experience for publication in the Hampshire Gazette, a Northampton newspaper.
In his "Letters from the 52nd" published in the Hampshire Gazette on May 5, 1863, Gere informed readers in western Massachusetts that he sent the photograph of Peter to Northampton and invited people to view the image at a bookstore on Main Street. Here are their observations and thoughts of the situation they encountered as best we can reconstruct it.