The highly unusual daguerreotype below reflects in its silver surface a grim symbol of the early tumult that eventually culminated in the Civil War. Captain Jonathan Walker (1799-1878) was born on Cape Cod but operated out of Florida. He was strongly sympathetic to the abolitionist cause and in 1844 tried to help a group of seven slaves escape to the West Indies. The venture failed, and Walker was captured, fined six hundred dollars, and thrown into solitary confinement for a year. Before he was released, the letters S.S. were branded on the palm of his right hand. Of course, Walker’s captors hoped to disgrace him with the stigma of “Slave Stealer,” but Walker did not bear his scar with shame. For years he delivered antislavery lectures, and he inspired John Greenleaf Whittier, himself an implacable foe of slavery, to write the following thundering stanzas: Sometime shortly after his release Walker met Albert Southworth, a pioneer photographer who had learned the daguerreotype process from Samuel Morse and had recently gone into partnership with Josiah Hawes. Southworth and Hawes produced some of the finest early daguerrean images, and their skill and imagination are evident in this stark likeness of Walker’s hand. The image is among the earliest “conceptual” portraits ever made—that is, one in which a part of the body is made to symbolize the personality of the subject. Ironically, no full portrait of Walker is known to exist, but his memory is well enough served by the image of his strong, scarred hand. The initials here are reversed, since the daguerrean process produced a mirror image. The picture will be included in a book entitled The Spirit of Fact: The Daguerreotypes of Southworth & Hawes, 1843-1862 , to be published by David R. Godine, Boston, and the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, Rochester.
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The Branded Hand
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