PBA Galleries

Carte-de-Visite photograph, captioned “A Slave Girl From New Orleans” at bottom margin. 2½x4". Text on verso reads, “The net proceeds from the sale of these Photographs will be devoted to the education of Colored People in the department of the Gulf, now under the command of Major General Banks…All orders must be addressed to H.N.Bent, No. 1 Mercer Street, New York”.

The 11 year-old girl in the picture, Rebecca Huger, was one of five “white” slave children freed in 1863 by the Union Army in New Orleans, where she had been a slave in her father’s house. The children were taken on a tour of northern cities by Abolitionists who arranged their public appearances as emotionally-powerful propaganda in support of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, driving home the reality that even white-complexioned children could be enslaved under Southern laws that classified all persons with any degree of African ancestry as Black. Scores of photographs of the children were also taken in New York to be mass-produced and sold to raise money for schools for freed Blacks in Louisiana. Ironically, while visiting Philadelphia, the children were refused admission to one hotel “on account of color”.