Peter (fl. 1863) (also known as Gordon, "Whipped Peter", or "Poor Peter") was an escaped American slave who was the subject of photographs documenting the extensive keloid scarring of his back from whippings received in slavery. Although keloid scarring was not a usual consequence of whipping, the "scourged back" photo became one of the most widely circulated photos of the abolitionist movement during the American Civil War and remains one of the most notable photos of the 19th-century United States. The photo of the scourged back "spurred a number of different narratives, all of which were intended to illustrate the meaning of his portrait, and privilege his photograph as a means by which to picture slavery and dramatize the need for abolition". 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. They serve as two of the earliest and most dramatic examples of how the newborn medium of photography could change the course of history." Many historians have repeated the account presented in an 1863 Harper's Weekly article which consisted of a triptych of illustrations (all said to be of Gordon) and a narrative describing Gordon's escape from slavery and enlistment in the Union Army as factual. However, while the historicity of the photograph of Peter's scourged back and the narrative of his life and escape are well-documented, the narrative that appeared in Harper's was a generalized legend dashed off by the staff as page filler, based on a combination of factual anecdote and convenient fiction. Harper's "Gordon" is a composite character, while the historical Gordon and Peter are almost certainly two different people who were combined by Harper's for narrative convenience. Peter or Gordon's service in the U.S. Colored Troops after emancipation is claimed in news reports in Harper's Weekly and The Liberator but so far has not been verified through other records.
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Background
On January 29, 1863, Union Major General Nathaniel P. Banks issued his General Order 12, which affirmed that the Emancipation Proclamation applied in Louisiana, except in 12 parishes that had been specifically exempted. However, for the time being at least, the U.S. Army did not intend to interfere with specific plantations. That said, per the army'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." Formerly enslaved people who reached the protection of the Union Army during the course of the war were called contrabands, and in some cases thousands-strong columns of freed slaves followed U.S. Army troop movements through the South. Eventually, contraband refugee camps were set up alongside many Union military fortifications. Contrabands were ultimately recruited in large numbers to the U.S. Colored Troops. USCT units constituted approximately 10 percent of the Union Army manpower by war's end.
Peter Peter departed for freedom on March 24, 1863, at midnight. Peter had been the legal property of Capt. John Lyons of Saint Landry Parish, Louisiana; Lyons owned a 3,000-acre (12 km2) plantation and was recorded as being owner of 38 slaves at the time of the 1860 census. The Lyons plantation was located along the west bank of the Atchafalaya River, between present-day Melville and Krotz Springs, Louisiana. As it happens, this was not far from the Red River district of Louisiana, which was the setting of both Tom's final dwelling place in the fictional Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the site of the Eppes plantation described by Solomon Northup in Twelve Years a Slave. A newspaper writer of the 1850s commented on the tortures described by Northrup: "the nearest plantation was distant ... a half-mile, and of course there could be no interference on the part of neighbours in any punishment, however cruel, or however well disposed to interfere they might be." 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):
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