Photo of slave wearing collar device from Ken Burns documentary

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Congratulations Wilber!

Let me issue a warning to all: Make sure you have the safe search option on if doing a Google image search for "slave restraint devices".:eek:

dvrmte

I wish your warning had come yesterday before I did a search ... :smile:

I would like to know what the lettering is on the man's forehead - is it writing or scarring? I have read that some slaves were given punishments such as branding, pulling of teeth, etc., to drastically change their appearance so that they would be more easily caught if they ran away again. I tried blowing up the photo but don't have much patience with it and didn't get very far.
 
I wish your warning had come yesterday before I did a search ... :smile:

I would like to know what the lettering is on the man's forehead - is it writing or scarring? I have read that some slaves were given punishments such as branding, pulling of teeth, etc., to drastically change their appearance so that they would be more easily caught if they ran away again. I tried blowing up the photo but don't have much patience with it and didn't get very far.

I'm not seeing lettering; I am, however, seeing a severe scar running from his forehead at least to his cheekbone. There also seems to be a problem with his left eye. How it happened, of course, we won't know unless someone digs up a narrative.

To blow it up (for most of our purposes) the easiest thing is to put your cursor on it and keep hitting CNTRL + till it's big enough for you to make something of it (use the - key to reduce the size). Hope this helps. Hey, Wilber.....I can actually do SOMETHING. :smile:
 
Is it my eyes, or does he appear to be missing a finger and a thumb?

To me, that mark on his forehead looks like a raised scar from a brand. Would be nice to find a narrative about this man - don't think I'd want to see the rest of him! Dude's seen some hard times.
 
Is it my eyes, or does he appear to be missing a finger and a thumb?

To me, that mark on his forehead looks like a raised scar from a brand. Would be nice to find a narrative about this man - don't think I'd want to see the rest of him! Dude's seen some hard times.

This is interesting--if you look at the photo posted here, and then the one on the blog it's linked to (Thanks, by the way--nice site!) the scarring looks very different. We may need the ref to do some magic for us (Willllllllbeeerrrrr!). When I use my antique method of blowing it up, his hand goes out of the frame, so I'd love to see that close up as well.
 
taken from: http://www.angelfire.com/un/baileyhistory/doc/wdford.html

Another of the Howards that fell short of the ideal was Vincent’s uncle, Isaac Howard (1761-by 1852). Isaac was a younger brother of Jeroboam Howard, Vincent’s father. Isaac migrated to Woodford County in 1788. Isaac married Susy (Lucy) Willis in 1798. Isaac and Susy had seven children. Isaac died in Woodford County. Isaac had nine slaves in 1810 according to the Federal Census of Kentucky that year. The picture below includes one of Isaac's former slaves, Wilson Chinn. This picture appeared in ”White and Colored Slaves” by C.C. Leigh in Harper’s Weekly (January 30, 1864), p. 71. Harper's had the following caption for the picture, "Left to right: Wilson Chinn, Charles Taylor, Augusta Boujey, Mary Johnson, Isaac White, Rebecca Hunger, Robert Whitehead and Rosina Downs. Emancipated slaves, white and colored. The children are from the schools established in New Orleans, by order of Major-General Banks. The article that accompanied the picture made the following observations about Wilson Chinn:
bly-2_Thumb.jpg
bly-2 Wilson Chinn is about 60 years old. He was “raised” by Isaac Howard of Woodford County, Kentucky. When 21 years old he was taken down the river and sold to Volsey B. Marmillion, a sugar planter about 45 miles above New Orleans. This man was accustomed to brand his Negroes, and Wilson has on his forehead the letters “V.B.M.” Of the 210 slaves on the plantation 105 left at one time and came into the Union camp. Thirty of them had been branded like cattle with a hot iron, four of them on the forehead, and the others on the breast or arm.

And here's the entire picture:
 
Ooh! Thanks! Looking up some other pics of him - he's got all his digits! (Still looks like 80 miles of bad road, though.) There's a picture of him with three white kids, who are emancipated slaves going to a colored school. You can't see the black in them but this was one of the things Union soldiers thought about with slavery - here were slaves who looked like them!
 
This site calls the photos part of a propaganda campaign: http://trilogy.brynmawr.edu/speccoll/quakersandslavery/commentary/themes/white_slaves.php

"The tremendous success of the "White Slaves" propaganda campaign has been under increasing scrutiny in recent years. Scholars of history, photography, and cultural studies have formulated a number of interesting arguments to explain the appeal these images may have had for contemporary viewers.


In "Rosebloom and Pure White, Or So It Seemed," Mary Niall Mitchell points out that by depicting slaves as white, the photographs made an argument for the Civil War that was independent of class status. Southern slavery was a threat to the freedom of all white people, the photographs insisted; thus repudiating the notion, made dangerous by the New York draft riots of 1863, that the Civil War was purely an elitist conflict waged with the blood of the poor (Mitchell 58) In the same article, Mitchell also highlights the significance of the fact that the majority of the photos in the series were portraits of young, white, and well-dressed girls. Such portraits took advantage of the patronizing tendencies of the northern Victorian public, calling upon the viewer to protect the purity, innocence, and "whiteness" of youthfulness and femininity (Mitchell 72).


In "Visualizing the Color Line," Carol Goodman notes that much of the power of the photographs stemmed from allusions to physical abuse. When paired with a related article in the same issue of Harper's Weekly, the allusions in the portrait of white slaves to the white masters' sexual exploitation of their female slaves is clear. The most grievous sin of slavery, the editor of Harper's Weekly contends, is that it permits slaveholding "'gentlemen' [to] seduce the most friendless and defenseless of women". Moreover, two of the four black slaves included in the publicity tour bear the marks of abuse on their skin--Wilson has a brand upon his forehead; Mary, as she is described in Harper's Weekly, has more than 50 rawhide-scars on her arm and back. (Goodman)


Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, in Portraits of a People, considers the ways props were used to imply that the subjects shared the viewers' values. Several portraits taken by Charles Paxson figure the American flag prominently in the composition, such as "Freedom's Banner." Another of Paxson's photographs, "Learning is Wealth," depicts each of the subjects holding a book--which, moreover, recalls the purpose behind the whole project, raising money for schools in Louisiana. (Shaw 160)."
 
As a Civil War buff and author of a Civil War Historical Fiction novel this site has been an enormous learning experience for me, but I have not ever referred to anyone by name or re-posted their remarks as is commonplace here. Being candid has never been my problem, but I fail to see where I've used sarcasm to any moderator, but many of my remarks here have been in jest and I'm not saying I've been taken out of context so I'll let the chips fall where they may. Im presently reading the preliminary Report of the American Freedmen Inquiry Commision and the coincidence of viewing the photo of a slave wearing a metal collar really aroused my interest. Many of my remarks were as result of what I learned from that document.

Mulejack
 
This site calls the photos part of a propaganda campaign: http://trilogy.brynmawr.edu/speccoll/quakersandslavery/commentary/themes/white_slaves.php

.......

Another of Paxson's photographs, "Learning is Wealth," depicts each of the subjects holding a book--which, moreover, recalls the purpose behind the whole project, raising money for schools in Louisiana. (Shaw 160)."


From your linked article I read this:

"Accompanied on their tour by Col. George Hanks of the Corps d'Afrique (the 18th Infantry, a corps of colored soldiers), the group posed for photographs in New York and Philadelphia (Metropolitan Museum of Art). The portraits were produced in the format of cartes de visite (CDVs), albumen prints the size of a calling card, and sold for 25 cents each. The proceeds of the sale were directed to Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks in Louisiana, where the money would be "devoted to the education of colored people," as the verso of each photograph explains."




I wonder how much of this money got to Gen. Banks and how much of it went from Gen. Banks to the education of colored people.
 
According to Wikipedia, Banks established a Board of Education and 95 schools to provide job training and basic literacy for the freed slaves. He did this in the face of considerable opposition to this unprecedented policy. Do you have any evidence RobertJ?
 
According to Wikipedia, Banks established a Board of Education and 95 schools to provide job training and basic literacy for the freed slaves. He did this in the face of considerable opposition to this unprecedented policy. Do you have any evidence RobertJ?

I have no evidence one way or the other. But if the funding campaign began as white slave propaganda where do you think the proceeds ended up?
 
I have no evidence one way or the other. But if the funding campaign began as white slave propaganda where do you think the proceeds ended up?

I think the proceeds ended up financing a new school system. I think you don't have any evidence to the contrary.
 
His name is Wilson Chinn, he was a "branded" slave from Louisiana. The full image of him is even more haunting, because his legs are fettered with irons as well.

Yes, I agree this image is haunting. After all this is a real live human being that has been branded, not unusual under the Code Noir (the slave codes of the French territories).
 
And here's another copy of that picture, taken from http://usslave.blogspot.com/2011/02/iron-chains-and-collars-on-slaves.html: Could not find the story behind it.

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Hi I'm Ron from US Slave, and this is a photograph of Wilson Chinn a "branded slave" from Louisiana. This certainly seems to be a posed picture, but the "props" are most definitely authentic. Wilson Chinn's branded forehead and his disgusted countenance is palpable. You can see the pain and humiliation with these devices.

If you are interested in the names of these outrageous torture devices, then you might consult Medieval torture forums. I have found that the torture devices used during the Spanish Inquisition and other European religious conflicts have helped me to "name that torture." The horns and collar thing certainly seems to originate with the Spanish and Portuguese. If you look at drawings and paintings from colonial Brazil or other Iberian Peninsular enslavement of Spanish South American or Caribbean Island holdings, then these collars with rods and horns keep showing up.
 
This site calls the photos part of a propaganda campaign: http://trilogy.brynmawr.edu/speccoll/quakersandslavery/commentary/themes/white_slaves.php

"The tremendous success of the "White Slaves" propaganda campaign has been under increasing scrutiny in recent years. Scholars of history, photography, and cultural studies have formulated a number of interesting arguments to explain the appeal these images may have had for contemporary viewers.

Is it "propaganda" or public awareness. The term "propaganda" wasn't apart of our language until the turn of the century. These photographs were from 1864. The slave holding planters were great with the loyal servant "happy darky" narrative. The optics of torture devices, slave collars, chains and other assorted fetters calls that plantation narrative into question.
 
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Is it "propaganda" or public awareness. The term "propaganda" wasn't apart of our language until the turn of the century. These photographs were from 1864. The slave holding planters were great with the loyal servant "happy darky" narrative. The optics of torture devices, slave collars, chains and other assorted fetters calls that plantation narrative into question.

The dissemination of information as political strategy has existed as long as civilization has, regardless of what name it is called in modern times.

I posted that link for information purposes, so as to know the context of the images. It wasn't to downplay the cruelties of slavery. I wonder where those cruel devices were manufactured and what fabric the people wore as clothing that viewed those images?

With the institution of slavery came punishments that seem unusual by todays standards. Criminal punishment at that time would be considered cruel by todays standards. Public punishments such as hangings, whippings, stocks, etc. were common place at the time for all races.

You need to take off those 21st century spectacles when viewing 19th century events.
 
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