May Non -Fiction blog post

        I read an article in the New York Times called “Cameristas” by Ted Widmer. In the article it talks about a photograph taken in April or March 1863(during the Civil War). The picture was of the back of an escaped slave named Gordon. He had so many scars on his back that the scar tissue began to build up and stick out of his skin and the scars were layered on top of each other. Gordon escaped from a plantation in Mississippi and supported the Vicksburg campaign and the medical examiners asked the photographs to take the picture after they saw his back. The picture was then sent to New England where an artist recreated the image into a wood graving, so it could be printed in the papers. On the day Vicksburg fell (July 4, 1863) the picture was published in Harper’s weekly. The author states that it was a way all of America could see “the horror of slavery.” The photograph is now in an exhibit at the Met called “Photography and the American Civil War.” The author states that historians have the pictures (like the one of Gordon) taken by soldiers to thank for lots of the knowledge they have about the Civil War and slavery today.

        

   The author used craft to explain the horrors of slavery and the importance of photography in the Civil War. In the beginning the authors states while describing Gordon’s scars, Gordon had been whipped so many times that a mountainous ridge of scar tissue was climbing out of his back. It was detailed, like a military map, and resulted from so many whippings that the scars had to form on top of one another.” He described it this way to help the reader visualize the horrible beatings this man had gone through and to show the horrors of slavery at the time of the Civil War. The author also talks about the importance of photography in the Civil war by saying, “ It was not possible then, nor is it now, to tell the story of the conflict without recourse to the roughly one million images that were created in darkrooms around America. All historians are indebted to the resourceful Americans who left this priceless record to later generations.” This helps the reader understand how hard it would have been to understand the war without these pictures.

        

     I agree with the author that photography was important in the Civil War and other wars in general. Its helps us really see into the battles and the struggles of the time since soldiers took them. In cases like the photo of Gordon they helped Americans see the horrors of slavery and started to fight against it.