Chances are, if you've looked into the Civil War period likely seen "The Scourged Back" or some version of it as the image is quite famous. As the report above points out:

Harper's Weekly originally published the photo on Independence Day in 1863, in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg. At the time, it chronicled Gordon's escape from a Louisiana plantation before he took up arms for the Union during the Civil War, the Portrait Gallery website explains.
One journalist after seeing the image said, "This Card Photograph should be multiplied by 100,000 and scattered over the States. It tells the story in a way that even Mrs. [Harriet Beecher] Stowe cannot approach, because it tells the story to the eye," according to the Smithsonian museum.

'It exists!' he cried.
'No,' said O'Brien.
He stepped across the room. There was a memory hole in the opposite wall. O'Brien lifted the grating. Unseen, the frail slip of paper was whirling away on the current of warm air; it was vanishing in a flash of flame. O'Brien turned away from the wall.
'Ashes,' he said. 'Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never existed.'
'But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it. You remember it.'
'I do not remember it,' said O'Brien.
(George Orwell, 1984)

Didn't realize that, although I probably should have, and speaking as someone with longterm Anglo and Irish connections it certainly makes sense. Gracias!