A very desirable carte de visite photograph issued in the aftermath of the Emancipation Proclamation in New Orleans. The city had been captured during 1863, and with the Proclamation, northern missionaries and educators descended on the city to immediately begin schools for the young "contraband." 

Photographs of the children were sold and distributed to raise funds for the schools. The young former slaves were often intentionally photographed and staged, as here, in a way that attempted to cast the children as "essentially the same as white people." The intentional erasure of the distinctive African features of the children and situating them as wealthy New England children was a sort of promise to financial supporters that through education and, in many cases, Christian conversion, the freed slaves could integrate seamlessly into existing white American society and culture. 

The back reads: 

The net proceeds from the sale of these Photographs will be devoted to the education of Colored People in the department of the Gulf, now under command of Maj. Gen'l Banks. 

Paxson, Charles [Photographer]. Rebecca. A Slave Girl from New Orleans. No. 2. Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1864 by S. Tackaberry, in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York. Chas. Paxson, Photographer, New York. 

A nicely preserved example with a small foxing mark at the lower left of the image as shown, top right corner torn and now consolidated. Lightly toned.