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Recent Acquisitions

Carte de Visite of “The Scourged Back” Photograph

HNOC acquired an original copy of the infamous image that took Civil War-era America by storm, quickly becoming a tool of the abolitionist cause.

Recent Acquisitions

Carte de Visite of “The Scourged Back” Photograph

HNOC acquired an original copy of the infamous image that took Civil War-era America by storm, quickly becoming a tool of the abolitionist cause.

1863

William D. McPherson and A. J. Oliver

2025.0084.2

The man faces away from the camera, his face visible only in profile. His exposed back is covered in a heavy web of scars—the result of a violent punishment likely received the prior year while enslaved on a plantation. The untitled photograph, commonly referred to as “The Scourged Back,” is now among the most well-known images of the American slave system. Originally issued as an inexpensive and easily reprinted carte de visite in the spring of 1863, it circulated widely. (A carte de visite is a photographic print mounted to a card. Unlike daguerreotypes and ambrotypes, which are one-of-a-kind images, cartes de visite were created from a negative, allowing unlimited copies to be made.) By the summer of that year, the image reached audiences across the nation via an engraved reproduction and article in Harper’s Weekly, quickly becoming a tool of the abolitionist cause.

Three different versions of “The Scourged Back” exist, but they are so similar that they have coalesced in popular memory as a single image. The photographs were taken, likely on two separate days, in Baton Rouge in 1863, attributed to photographers William D. McPherson and A. J. Oliver. The sitter has been most consistently identified as a formerly enslaved man from Louisiana, possibly named Gordon or Peter, who escaped from a nearby plantation and crossed into Union territory. By 1863 this type of action was becoming more commonplace, especially in Louisiana, where enslaved men, women, and children were fleeing to the protection of the Union Army in increasing numbers as part of a mass movement that historian W. E. B. DuBois described as “a general strike.” Many quickly took up support roles and eventually filled the ranks of what would become the United States Colored Troops, representing a surge in fighting power that became critical to US victory.

On the back of the carte de visite, a facsimile of a handwritten inscription from an assistant surgeon reads explains that he “[has] found a large number of the four hundred contrabands examined by me to be as badly lacerated as the specimen represented in the photograph.”

McPherson and Oliver had been working in Baton Rouge at least since Union occupation in the spring of 1862. The date range of their activity in Louisiana, as well as the subjects, clearly points to their involvement with the US army and the Union cause. HNOC holds a sampling of other images of theirs from the war years, most of which show buildings of the area as well as parts of Civil War campaigns in Baton Rouge and Port Hudson.

1863 photograph of a plantation and enslaved people, likely in Louisiana. HNOC, 1992.2.21

Our Scouts and Guides in 1863 in Baton Rouge, 1863. HNOC, 2018.0234.7

Two related images made by the photographers in HNOC’s collection depict slavery in the region: an 1863 image of a plantation, likely in Louisiana, showing enslaved people and their houses and an image known as Our scouts and guides in 1863 in Baton Rouge showing two young men, likely formerly enslaved, recently arrived in Union Army camps. Both images are cartes de visite, which allowed them to be quickly and cheaply made and disseminated.

Of all McPherson and Oliver’s images, however, “The Scourged Back” had the widest reach, making a powerful impact on the nation’s visual understanding of the first photographed war in the United States. HNOC had sought a copy of this image for years, and in early 2025 we were able to purchase an example. The photograph enriches our holdings related to the Civil War, slavery in America, and photography. HNOC can also put the photograph into local context, as it was made in Louisiana and depicts a former Louisiana resident. This image had a meaningful impact on the American experience of the Civil War and on the abolitionist cause. Over 160 years later, it continues to illustrate with photographic precision the violence and horrors of American chattel slavery.