Chaotic Freedom in Civil War Louisiana

An essay about the story of two men transformed for the better in the most awful of places. "Chaotic Freedom" is also the biography of an iconic photograph. The awfulness is the Civil War, the racism that ensconced it and the death that dominated it. The men are printer and newspaper publisher Henry S. Gere and currier and carpenter Marshall S. Stearns, both from western Massachusetts--the former consistently an antislavery man and supporter of black resistance, the latter initially...
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An essay about the story of two men transformed for the better in the most awful of places. "Chaotic Freedom" is also the biography of an iconic photograph. The awfulness is the Civil War, the racism that ensconced it and the death that dominated it. The men are printer and newspaper publisher Henry S. Gere and currier and carpenter Marshall S. Stearns, both from western Massachusetts--the former consistently an antislavery man and supporter of black resistance, the latter initially indifferent to racial concerns at best, racist at worst. Over their time in the 52nd Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers, the two grew to share much ideological common ground. The photograph they eventually collaborated to produce became the Civil War emblem featured in Harper's: the carte de visite of Peter, often misidentified as "Gordon," the slave with scourged back, elbow jutting, and striking profile. Together, these biographies tell us of the possibility of personal redemption, the importance of the ordinary, and the evolution of an image.