Abstract
On 21 August 1850, only two days after the Senate passed the Fugitive Slave Law, approximately 2,000 abolitionists gathered in Cazenovia, New York, where they enacted a social, written, and photographic protest. The notice suggests that the daguerreotype was intended as a concrete means of communication between the group and Chaplin, as well as a symbol of protest and togetherness. The Liberator considered the image as evidence of political struggle and of abolitionists’ cultural ingenuity in the nascent years of photographic news pictures. The Cazenovia daguerreotype fits uneasily into narratives about early American photography. Scholars have tended to define “photojournalism” in opposition to the conventions associated with unique, private images in the mid-nineteenth century—most notably the sentimental exchange of portraits amongst families and friends. At Cazenovia, they created a picture that shared and became news in the service of radical politics.