Contraband (American Civil War)

• 1. The Fort Monroe Doctrine

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  On the 24th of May 1861, three men named Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory and James Townsend crossed Hampton Roads harbor at night. They fled from Confederate-occupied Norfolk County to seek refuge inside Fort Monroe in Virginia. These three enslaved laborers had previously been forced to build an artillery battery at Sewell's Point aimed directly at the fort. Major General Benjamin Butler commanded the Union stronghold when they arrived. Butler was also a trained attorney who faced a legal dilemma regarding their status. The owners of these men demanded their return under the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Butler refused to send them back because Virginia had declared its secession from the United States. He argued that if Virginia considered itself a foreign country, then the Fugitive Slave Act did not apply. This legal maneuver allowed him to hold the men as captured enemy property rather than returning them to slavery. President Abraham Lincoln approved this policy through Secretary of War Simon Cameron. The telegraph message stated that Butler's contraband policy was officially approved by the administration.

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• 2. Origins And Terminology

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  The word contraband appeared in general language as early as 1812 to describe illegally smuggled goods including human beings. Thomas Nast published an illustration titled Contraband of War in the New York Illustrated News on the 15th of June 1861. The drawing depicted General Butler holding a leg while keeping a Southern villain at bay. Acting Master William Budd used the term for the first time in an official US military record on the 10th of August 1861. Before this date, Butler referred to the fugitives simply as slaves in his written communications with the War Department. On the 25th of September 1861, Navy Secretary Gideon Welles issued a directive regarding persons of color commonly known as contrabands. The directive authorized pay at the rate of $10 per month plus a full day's ration for these workers. Three weeks later the Union Army began paying male contrabands at Fort Monroe $8 a month and females $4. Congress passed the Confiscation Act of 1861 in August which declared any property used by the Confederate military could be confiscated. This included enslaved people who were now classified as captured enemy property rather than legal chattel.

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• 3. Grand Contraband Camps

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  Camp Hamilton formed just outside the walls of Fort Monroe when the number of refugees grew too large for the fort itself. A larger encampment developed in the ruins of the City of Hampton after Confederate troops burned it down. People living there called their new settlement the Grand Contraband Camp or Slabtown due to construction from building remnants. By April 1865 less than four years after the initial decision, an estimated 10,000 people escaped slavery to gain contraband status. More than one hundred contraband camps operated across the South by the end of the war. Horace James developed the Freedmen's Colony on Roanoke Island starting in 1862 with approximately 3,500 formerly enslaved people working toward self-sufficiency. The colony existed between 1863 and 1867 under Union Army supervision. One camp in Natchez Mississippi held 6,000 runaway negroes and was visited by General Ulysses S Grant in 1863. Conflicts arose when Union troops evicted residents to quarter soldiers inside the camp. Black men living there were systematically forced to join the Union Army against their will.

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• 4. Education And Emancipation Oak

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  Mary S. Peake began teaching both adult and child contrabands to read and write within the Grand Contraband Camp. She became the first Black teacher hired by the American Missionary Association which sent numerous Northern white teachers across the South. Classes took place outdoors under a large oak tree in Elizabeth City County despite Virginia laws prohibiting slave education. In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was read aloud to the gathered crowd beneath that same tree. The tree later received the name Emancipation Oak to commemorate this event. By 1863 four schools had been established in the Camp including one located at the former home of disgraced President John Tyler. The area where Peake taught eventually became part of Hampton University campus. For most contrabands full emancipation did not occur until the 6th of December 1865 when the Thirteenth Amendment ratified abolition except as punishment for crime.

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• 5. Military Recruitment And Labor

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  Thousands of free black people began to enlist in the United States Colored Troops after the Emancipation Proclamation authorized black military units in 1863. The Army allowed families of these soldiers to take refuge at contraband camps while their husbands served overseas. Black troops ultimately comprised nearly ten percent of all troops in the Union Army. Enslaved individuals used proximity to Union armies to escape and often helped in support roles such as cleaning or cooking. A letter from Floridian Jacob Rand of the 3rd Florida Infantry Regiment described an incident involving his battalion commander Major Benjamin B Sample. Sample received no recorded disciplinary actions despite controversies surrounding his treatment of enslaved people seeking freedom. Their arrival at union lines in Tennessee confirmed their status as contrabands regardless of Confederate claims. Actions like these were made possible via the closeness of Union armies during the chaos of battle.

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• 6. Confederate Countermeasures

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  A unique view of a temporary contraband camp appeared in Opelousas Louisiana from April to the 10th of May 1863 according to official reports. The account was written by a Confederate officer from St. Landry Parish likely General John G. Pratt for Governor Henry W Allen. This report published in 1865 detailed how Confederates attempted to re-enslave refugees who reached Union-held territory. One thousand five hundred contrabands behind federal lines at Harpers Ferry were kidnapped and re-enslaved when Confederates took the town. Confederate officials viewed these camps as humanitarian crises while simultaneously trying to reclaim human property. The government maintained that escaped slaves remained legal chattel despite Union policies declaring them captured enemy property. These countermeasures created tension between military objectives and the emerging rights of freedmen within occupied territories.