Scars of Christmas
December 25, 1862.
This infamous photo speaks of slavery perhaps at its most cruel. What is less well-known is that the slave, "Gordon," received those wounds during a brutal whipping on Christmas Day, 1862.
Learn more about this photograph: "A Slave Named Gordon," New York Times.
- Submitted by Peter A. Gilbert, Vermont Humanities Council Executive Director
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The Profound and Auspicious Significance of the Civil War "in the History of the World"
On Christmas Day 1862, America's Minister to Great Britain, Charles Francis Adams, wrote to his son Henry, "The great body of the aristocracy and the wealthy commercial classes are anxious to see the United States go to pieces. On the other hand the middle and lower class sympathise with us, more and more as they better comprehend the true nature of the struggle. . . . The true division now begins to make itself perceptible here as elsewhere in Europe -- the party of the old and of the new, of vested rights and of well regulated freedom. All equally see in the convulsion in America an era in the history of the world, out of which must come in the end a general recognition of the right of mankind to the produce of their labor and the pursuit of happiness. . . ."
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