[1] In 2013, Joan Paulson Gage wrote in The New York Times that "The images of Wilson Chinn in chains, like the one of Gordon and his scarred back, are as disturbing today as they were in 1863.

[6] That said, per Irwin's Promulgation of the Emancipation Proclamation order, "Officers and soldiers will not encourage or assist slaves to leave their employers, but they cannot compel or authorize their return by force.

[4][12] The Lyons plantation was located along the west bank of the Atchafalaya River in St. Landry Parish, between present-day Melville and Krotz Springs, Louisiana.

"[14] According to the letter of "Bostonian" (dated November 12, 1863; submitted to Horace Greeley, the influential editor of the New-York Daily Tribune; and intended to combat the feigned skepticism of Copperhead "Peace Democrats" about the photograph specifically and abolitionist claims of the abuses of slavery generally):[8] "Poor Peter" is the name of the negro whose lacerated back, as presented in the original photograph, has excited both the sympathy and the indignation of every humanitarian who has seen it.

Being interrogated in French, "Poor Peter," who stood before us the picture of poverty, shrouded in rags of every imaginable color, began his doleful story.

It sent a thrill of horror to every white person present, but the few Blacks who were waiting for passes, men, women and children, paid but little attention to the sad spectacle, such terrible scenes being painfully familiar to them all.

The above is a verbatim copy of the original statement of "Poor Peter," as written on the back of the photograph at Baton Rouge, a few hours after it was printed.

[17][18] An interview with a man named Andrew Boone for the WPA's Slave Narratives project in the 1930 matter-of-factly described the practice: "By dis time de blood sometimes would be runnin' down dere heels.

"[16] Overseer "Artayon Carrier" may be a Saint Landry Parish resident named Pierre Arthéon Carrière, although there is no documentary evidence associating that person with either the Lyons plantation or employment as a slave driver.

[20] There are three variations of the "scourged back" picture, showing minor adjustments, which indicates that the photographers or their patrons were aware of the impact of the image and "revised" the pose to improve it.

[5] The original images of Peter and Gordon, and at least two other known photos of contrabands photographed by McPherson & Oliver, were taken in a "makeshift studio with a hanging sheet for a backdrop and bare ground".

[24] On July 4, 1863, the 87th anniversary of American independence and the day after the high-water mark of the Confederacy and the crucial Union victory at the Battle of Gettysburg, Harper's Weekly, the most widely read magazine in the United States during the Civil War, published an article called "A Typical Negro", that featured three photos of a man the magazine called Gordon.

After crossing each creek or swamp, he rubbed his body with the onion to throw the dogs off his scent, ultimately reaching refuge with the Union soldiers of the XIX Corps who were stationed in Baton Rouge.

[3] The excerpted section of the New York Times article included information drawn from interviews with two pairs of married contrabands who had boarded the USS Lafayette (1848) near the mouth of the Red River in Louisiana.

[3] The larger part of the July 4 issue of Harper's Weekly was devoted to Theodore R. Davis' sketches of the ongoing Siege of Vicksburg.

[3] According to the "Bostonian" letter, Gordon and Peter are two different people from a group of four that had traveled together for at least part of the journey to Union lines, all of whom had previously been the legal property of either Capt.

[29] McPherson & Oliver are probably best known for "The Scourged Back", their sensational, widely published portrait of "Gordon", an escaped slave from a Louisiana plantation, who came into the Union lines at Baton Rouge.

[30] In August 1864, following the capture of Fort Morgan on Mobile Bay, Alabama, McPherson & Oliver made a comprehensive photographic record of that installation.

[5] The Bostonian letter to the New-York Tribune profers extensive backstories on the first two images in the triptych but pointedly ignores the etching of the enlisted man.

[5][33] According to Harper's Weekly, Gordon joined the Union Army as a guide three months after the Emancipation Proclamation allowed for the enrollment of freed slaves into the military forces.

[3] In July 1863, the country's most important abolitionist periodical, William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator, reported that Gordon had fought bravely as a sergeant in the Second Louisiana Native Guard during the Siege of Port Hudson in May 1863.

[35] There were five regiments known as the Corps D'Afrique Engineers, recruited by Gen. Daniel Ullman, that participated in the Port Hudson campaign, primarily digging trenches and contributing to the force strength of the 20,000 Union troops facing the 12,000 Confederates.

[35] The Corps D'Afrique Engineers is also credited with building Bailey's Dam, which saved the Union navy's Mississippi River Squadron.

"[36] Theodore Tilton, editor of The Independent in New York stated in 1863: Five or six months after the scourging ... the frightful laceration was partially healed, and only scars remained.

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.

[37][better source needed][38][1]The image was indeed duplicated and widely distributed; copies were printed by Mathew Brady, McAllister & Brother of Philadelphia, and Chandler Seaver Jr. of Boston.

[39] In 2015, Frank Goodyear, a former curator of photographs at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery said, "Photography mediates our understanding of the world ... many Americans had never seen what a beating literally looked like.