On January 30, 1864, Harper's Weekly began publishing pictures of children with the title "Freed Slaves - White and Colored" as part of a campaign to raise funds for schools for freed slaves in New Orleans.
The focus of the children in these photos is that slavery was not solely a matter of color. If a child's mother is a slave, he or she is also a slave.
These pictures included children with predominantly European features, who were photographed alongside older slaves with dark skin, usually with African features. It was intended to shock viewers and serve as a reminder that slaves shared their humanity, and proof that slaves did not belong in the category of "the other."
By distributing images of what appeared to be white people, campaigners alluded to the horrific conditions of slavery and created a vivid image of emancipation for an anxious audience. These are not the lustful, violent slaves of the planters' nightmares, but humble, sentimental children and patient, pious adults.
The explicit use of children naturalizes stereotypes of mixed-race individuals. As historian Walter Johnson has described, slave traders and buyers recognized the special status and high value of light-skinned slaves in the slave market. These qualities can be read on children's bodies without the clothing or traits an adult subject might need.
These images participated in the wider discourse on photography's indexical relationship with nature and its ability to reveal the invisible. The pale bodies of these little children could be seen on liberation and it was a cause of great concern after liberation. But its results were largely hidden from public scrutiny before the war.
Moreover, this campaign would construct the misrepresentation of white slaves as part of history and not the future of the post-Civil War United States. With slavery legalized, the champion must find a new reason for abolition.
Portrayed as studious, patriotic, and pious, these New Orleans children would be used to vindicate the much-maligned abolitionist movement of the late 1850s, considered the radical political third rail of the struggle to preserve the Union.
At least 22 different prints from the “Emancipating Slaves from New Orleans” series survive today. The photographs were produced by New York photographers Charles Paxson and Myron H. By Kimball.
Charlie.
Copy of Harper's Weekly, January 30, 1864: Charles Taylor is eight years old. His complexion is very fair, and his hair is light and smooth. Three out of five boys in any school in New York are darker than him. But this white boy was sold into slavery twice, as his mother claims.
Alexander Weathers of Lewis County, Virginia was sold by his father and "owner" to a slave trader named Harrison to Mr. Thornhill of New Orleans. This man fled at the approach of the army, and his captives were freed by General Butler. The boy is smart. Although he has been in school for less than a year, he reads and writes very well.
His mother was mulatto; One daughter was sold to Texas before she left Virginia, and she thinks one son is with his father in Virginia. These three children, to all appearances of the unmixed white race, arrived in Philadelphia in December, and were taken by their guardian, Mr. Bacon, to the St. Lawrence Hotel on Chestnut Street.
Within a few hours, Mr. Bacon informed him that the landlord had informed him that they must therefore be colored people, and he kept a hotel for the whites. From this place of hospitality the children were taken to the "Continental," where they were received without hesitation.
Rebecca.
Transcript of Harper's Weekly, January 30, 1864. Rebecca Huger was eleven years old. She was a slave in her father's house. She is white to all appearances. Her complexion, hair and features show not the slightest trace of African blood.
In the few months she has spent at school, she has learned to read well and writes as neatly as most children her age. Her mother and grandmother live in New Orleans. There they comfortably support themselves with their labor.
Grandmother, an intelligent mulatto, told Mr. Bacon that she had "raised" a large family of children, but that all this was left to her.
A Slave Girl in New Orleans.
Rebecca.
Rosa.
Transcript from Harper's Weekly, January 30, 1864: Rosina Downes is not seven years old. She is a fair child with fair complexion and smooth hair. Her father is in the rebel army. She has one sister who is as white as herself and three brothers. Her mother, a bright mulatto, lives in a poor shack in New Orleans and works hard to support her family.
Isaac and Rosa.
Transcript from Harper's Weekly, January 30, 1864: Isaac White was a black boy of eight years, but none the wiser than his white companions.
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