Could playing a heroic slave revive Will Smith's career

The black guy limped into the Union Army camp in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, ragged and fatigued.

It was March 1863, and many Americans were still unable to recognize the terrible truth of slavery.

The United States was two years into the Civil War, and despite the battle to free the slaves, the North felt enormous anti-black hatred, while the Confederate South could claim that the "unusual institution"—as it called slavery—that it was fighting to maintain was inherently humanitarian.

Then the man who came into the camp took off his shirt, and no one could pretend they didn't comprehend slavery's awful brutality.

Gordon, or "Whipped Peter" as he was afterward known, was an escaped slave with hideous wounds from the cruel flogging that nearly killed him.

Two freelance photographers recorded the thick, raised scars extending across his back, from his buttocks to his shoulders, and the horrifying photographs fanned abolitionist fervor across the United States and beyond.

Images of Peter's damaged body became an astoundingly strong tool for the Union and abolitionists in their struggle to win over Northerners and others dubious of the war throughout the world.

The images were accompanied by a fantastic story of Peter surviving a 10-day pursuit in which he escaped a pack of hunting hounds by running barefoot through miles of alligator-infested marsh.

He risked his life to enlist as a black soldier in the Union Army and fight to abolish the society that had enslaved him.

During the procedure, he removed his shirt and presented shocking evidence of his treatment to the world.

Will Smith, a fallen Hollywood icon, has finally embraced his horrible past as he battles his own struggle for salvation.

The 54-year-old actor was rightfully thrown out of the film industry and barred from attending the Oscars after he slapped the host, comedian Chris Rock, during the awards event in March last year for making a joke about his wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith.

"Emancipation," his first film since the controversy, with its valuable subject matter and $100 million budget, has inevitably been regarded as a clear attempt to regain Hollywood's favor.

It is based on a classic Will Smith action film, in which he plays a heroic and valiant hero who defends his wife, children, and slave pals against white oppressors.

The video depicts how he is separated from his family and brought to work on the Confederate railroad under a terrible regime in which laborers are imprisoned in appalling conditions and executed at the whim of ruthless guards.

He and a few other captives flee into Louisiana's leech-infested bayous.

Our hero confronts the alligator alone and uses his wits to outwit a hardened slave catcher (Ben Foster), who is desperate to grab him before he reaches the Union Army and Liberty.

The true narrative of Peter was pieced from the jumbled testimony—his memory possibly affected by fever—he gave to the Massachusetts infantry medics when he arrived at the camp, which was afterward publicized in the American press.

He resided on a 3,000-acre cotton plantation in southern Louisiana owned by Irish-born Captain John Lyon and his wife Bridget, along with 40 other slaves.

According to the film, Peter, who, like the other slaves, was not given the last name, was never taken to a Confederate Army camp to work on the railroad.

However, the plantation's overseer, Artaiu Caria, lashed him mercilessly.

The reason for the beating is unknown, but Peter claims it was so severe that it rendered him bedridden and recovering for two months, and when his owner saw the horrific wounds, he fired Curry.

Lyon most likely did this out of expediency—slaves were valuable, and owners couldn't afford to lose them to an overbearing overseer.

"I don't remember the whipping," he told his doctors, according to the newspaper report.

"I was two months in pain in bed from the scourging and the salty brine the Overseer put on my back." Little by little, my sense began to come — they said I was kind of crazy.'

Whether or whether John Lyon truly regretted his slave's awful injuries, Peter chose to go.

It's conceivable that he and three other prisoners had heard that President Lincoln had declared all slaves in the Confederacy free through the Emancipation Proclamation a few months earlier, in January 1863.

They snuck into it at night, intending to stuff their pockets with onions from the plantation.

While their owner and a group of neighbors chased them across rivers, fields, and forested moors, they were regularly brushed against their skin to repel bloodshed in their tracks.

One of the fugitives was apprehended and killed, while the fate of the other two is unclear. Peter walked the 40 miles to the Union Army in ten days.

One of the physicians who examined Peter predicted that he would be labeled "vicious" due to the severity of his punishment.

He did, however, say that he "looks bright and well-behaved," and that "few sensation authors have ever described harder punishments than this man had to suffer."

Even though they were war-hardened, the troops who saw Peter's back were taken aback.

According to the eyewitness, he knocked down a mound of soiled clothes that partially concealed his back.

'It caused a thrill of horror to every white man present, but the few negroes who were waiting paid little attention, such horrible scenes were familiar to all.'

As the news went across the country, abolitionists seized on a terrible image of Peter's back.

Unlike newspaper articles and novels on the atrocities of slavery, such as Uncle Tom's Cabin, the photograph could not be refuted.

It was one of the first instances in history that a new medium had such a profound effect.

The image was first published under the title 'The Scourged Back' in an anti-slavery journal.

The publication asserts that 'the black man with the wounds on his back' represents the savagery of 'the slave system and the culture that maintains it... this photo from the card should be multiplied by a hundred thousand and dispersed across the states.

In fact, the photograph attracted nearly as much attention as when it was published in Harper's Weekly, America's most widely read the magazine at the time, in an article titled "The Typical Negro."

It was accompanied by two more pictures, both based on photographs, one of which depicted the slave in the ragged and muddy clothes he arrived at the army camp in, and the other in the uniform of a corporal in the black infantry.

In utilizing the bow to thwart the dogs, he "displayed exceptional intelligence and energy," according to the article.

Copies of the historic photograph — characterized as "the first viral image" by Will Smith — were shared around the Union Army as soldiers displayed it as the perfect representation of why they were fighting.

“I am sending you a picture of a slave appearing after being whipped,” a surgeon in the 1st Louisiana Native Guard, one of the first all-black regiments in the Union Army, wrote to his brother.

"I have seen, during the period when I have been examining men for my own and other regiments, hundreds of such sights; but it may be new to you.'

He continued: "If you know someone who is talking about the humane way slaves are treated, please show them this picture. That's a lecture in itself.'

Pittar joined the Union Army as a guide and was caught by Confederates who tied him up, beat him, and left him for dead at one point.

He survived and returned to the ranks of the Union.

He was later recruited into an all-black infantry regiment and, reaching the rank of sergeant, is said to have fought valiantly in the Union forces' deadly siege of Port Hudson, Mississippi in July 1863.

It was the first attack in which black troops took the lead. Then he vanished from history.

In a sea of awful images of enslavement, his photography continues to stand out. Some believe it's because of Peter's dignified expression.

Even now, it has the potential to cause havoc. Joey McFarland, the producer of "Emancipation," took a copy of the DVD to the film's Los Angeles premiere last week and was later forced to apologize after several individuals were outraged.

He merely wanted to pay honor to a "great man," he said.

"Emancipation" is now available to watch on Apple TV.

Post by Bryan C.