Rebecca Huger, Charles Taylor, and Rosina Downs

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Description:

Carte-de-visite photograph of three children, two girls standing on either side of a boy, in linked arms. The printed caption below identifies them as "Rebecca, Charley and Rosa, Slave Children from New Orleans." Printed on reverse, "The nett (sic) proceeds from the sale of these Photographs will be devoted exclusively to the education of colored people in the Department of the Gulf, now under the command of Maj.-Gen. Banks."

The image and following information appeared in an article in "Harper's Weekly" on January 30, 1864 - "Rebecca Huger is eleven years old, and was a slave in her father's house, the special attendant of a girl a little older than herself. To all appearance she is perfectly white. Her complexion, hair, and features show not the slightest trace of negro blood. In the few months during which she has been at school she has learned to read well, and writes as neatly as most children her age. Her mother and grandmother, an intelligent mulatto, told Mr. Bacon that she had "raised" a large family of children, but these are all that are left to her."

"Rosina Downs is not quite seven years old. She is a fair child, with blond complextion and silky hair. Her father is in the rebel army. She has one sister as white as herself, and three borthers hwo are darker. Her mother, a bright mulatto, lives in New Orleans in a poor hut, and has hard work to support her family."

"Charles Taylor is eight years old. His complexion is very fair, hsi hair light and silky. Three out of five boys in any school in New York are darker than he. Yet this white boy, with his mother, as he declares, has been twice sold as a slave. First by his father and 'owner,' Alexander Wethers, of Lewis County, Virginia, to a slave-trader named Harrison, who sold them to Mr. Thornhill of New Orleans. This man fled at the approach of our army, and his slaves were liberated by General Butler. The boy is decidedly intelligent, and though he has been at school less that a year he reads and writes very well. His mother is a mulatto; she had one daughter sold into Texas before she herself left Virginia, and one son who, she supposes, is with his father in Virginia."