It appears to me that whenever a Civil War documentary is shown on television the same photographs are shown over and over again. And those photographs are of a former slave with whip marks on his back. As much as photography was used leading up to the war I would think the abolitionist would be taking as many photographs as possible to illustrate their point of the thousands of former slaves who had made their freedom to the north. Perhaps it's just me but I can't recall seeing more than a handful of these photographs of this brutality. One could correctly argue that the majority of the slaves were still in slavery in the days leading up to the war and during the war and as a result were not photographed. So I'll take the question a little further, how many former slaves prior to or during the war or after the war have photographs of the scars of their whippings?

I was taught in high school that about 25% of the southern whites owned slaves prior to the war. That percentage is not correct in my opinion after looking at the census reports and appears to be around the 10% or lower mark. Connecticut was the last state to outlaw slavery in New England in 1848 just 13 years prior to the war. While this may not be politically correct it is historically correct.