How This Photograph Helped Change the Course of History

The life of Whipped Peter

An escaped slave named Peter showing his scarred back at a medical examination in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1863. Library of Congress

The man depicted in the above photograph is an escaped slave named Gordon who was popularly known as Whipped Peter. He fled from a Louisiana plantation in March 1863 to a Union encampment in Baton Rouge where he gained his freedom. The picture above depicts the torture and abuse inflicted on enslaved African Americans by their…