This commonplace cut of a slave on the auction block was mass produced for use in southern newspapers to advertise slave sales. It appears in "The Anti-Slavery Record" as a stroke of irony. Opponents of abolition denounced the antislavery movement for its agitational pamphlets and newspapers, and particularly for its use of what opponents termed "incendiary pictures" of southern slavery. The editors note: "The cast from which it was taken was manufactured in this city, for the southern trade, by a firm of stereotypers, who, on account of the same southern trade, refuse to stereotype the Record, because it contained just such pictures! Now, how does it come to pass, that this said picture when printed in southern newspapers is perfectly harmless, but when printed in the Anti-Slavery Records is perfectly incendiary?", Illustration in the Anti-Slavery Record (New York: Published by R.G. Williams, for the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1835-1837), vol. II, no. VII (July, 1836), whole no. 19, p. 12., Small caption underneath the image reads: Who bids?, Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Anti-Slavery Movement Imagery.
Date
[July 1836]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Per A 245 60026.D v 2 n 7 p 12, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2852
Abolitionist group portrait of the propagandized fair-skinned children emancipated from enslavement, Rebecca Huger, Charles Taylor, and Rosina Downs, denied entrance to the hotel in December 1863 during a fundraising tour of the North. Touring on behalf of the Louisiana schools for the formerly enslaved established by Assistant Superintendent of Freedmen, Phillip Bacon, the rebuffed children were accepted at the Continental Hotel. Revenue from the sale of the portrait was to be donated to the education of emancipated enslaved people in the Department of the Gulf., Title from item., Date based on content., Name of photographer from duplicate photograph., See Harper's weekly, January 30, 1864, p. 71. (LCP **Per H, 1864)., See Kathleen Collin's "Portraits of slave children," History of photography 9 (July-September 1985), p. 187-210., Originally part of a McAllister scrapbook. McAllister Collection, gift, 1886., Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014.
Creator
M'Clees, Jas. E. (James E.), photographer
Date
[1863]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department cdv portraits- group- Emancipated enslaved children [5775.F.68]
