Monthly Archives: September 2017

One region of the United States that never shares in the Civil War conversation is the Pacific Northwest. Washington State was only a territory when war broke out in April of 1861. Despite three thousand…

Abraham Lincoln is remembered today as “The Great Emancipator.” Like many of his day,

Lincoln’s own views on slavery were complex and even somewhat incompatible with our knowledge of the 16th president. This is an exploration of Honest Abe’s changing position on the fate of slavery in the United States.

In the 1840s, Lincoln’s own thoughts on slavery were mixed. He thought it immoral and was raised in a family without any slaves. As a member of the Whig, soon to be Republican Party, Lincoln believed that the extension of slavery westward would lessen the integrity of the nation and would only further divide North and South. By confining slavery to the states where it already existed, Lincoln and many others hoped it would die out eventually, or if it did expand westward, that it would grow so unprofitable that people would abandon it completely.

By 1858, Lincoln was running for an Illinois senate seat. The race would make two of the nation’s most skilled orators argue over the issue of slavery in seven events later to be known as the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Stephen Douglas believed in the expansion of slavery and the right to popular sovereignty in the U.S. territories to decide whether they would allow slavery or not. Lincoln believed in the elimination of slavery, but his position was not for total equality of the races. In Charleston, Illinois on September 18th, 1858, Lincoln did indeed state, “I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

About 900 fugitive slaves had made their way to Fort Monroe after news of the contraband declaration had spread. Men, women, and children sought refuge with the Union Army because they believed they would be freed. Those people would not be freed until 1863 and would still be used as property for the Union war effort against the southerners.

After General Butler left Fort Monroe, General John Ellis Wool, the oldest man to serve as a general in the Civil War, was named commander of the fortifications and the Department of Virginia. In His General Orders No. 34 (found here) dated November 1st, 1861, General Wool listed the payment due to contraband slaves that worked for the Union Army. Laborers were meant to be paid ten dollars a month but were too often actually paid much less.

Mary S. Peake, a Virginia native, established her own school near the walls of Fort Monroe in September 1861. The school served as a model for others to be established in Union occupied territory during the rest of the war. The first attempts at Reconstruction were in Corinth, Mississippi during the Union occupation of 1862. Schools and homes for former slaves were erected on the plantation lands of their former masters.

By 1863, nearly 10,000 slaves had escaped to Washington, D.C. Those that reached the Union capital city found themselves unwanted and mistreated. Few contraband slaves found help outside of the Union army. Work was mostly available only in the army and navy. Cooking, cleaning, building and deconstructing were all parts of the contraband experience. It is estimated that around 40,000 former slaves had made it to Washington, D.C. by the end of the war in 1865.

In direct response to General Benjamin Butler’s decision at Fort Monroe in May of 1861, Congress passed a law saying any property used expressly for armed insurrection against the Federal government would be captured by…

Benjamin Butler and the Fate of Contraband Slaves

Benjamin Butler was the first person to declare escaped and captured slaves coming into Union lines contraband. This meant slaves, that were being used for the southern war

effort, were just as liable to seizure as horses, guns, food supplies or any other tool used by the Confederacy.

Benjamin Butler was the first person to declare escaped and captured slaves coming into Union lines contraband. This meant slaves, that were being used for the southern war effort, were just as liable to seizure as horses, guns, food supplies or any other tool used by the Confederacy.

When the Fort Monroe Decision occurred on May 24th, 1861, word spread quickly that slaves could be set free at the military outpost. Slaves came from all over Virginia to escape their southern masters, pleading for their freedom. Before he knew it, hundreds of slaves arrived at the fort. He wrote a letter dated May 27th, 1861 to General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, in which he said, “I am in the utmost doubt what to do with this species of property. Up to this time I have had come within my lines men and women with their children–entire families–each family belonging to the same owner. I have therefore determined to employ, as I can do very profitably, the able-bodied persons in the party, issuing proper food for the support of all, and charging against their services the expense of care and sustenance of the non- laborers, keeping a strict and accurate account as well of the services as of the expenditure having the worth of the services and the cost of the expenditure determined by a board of Survey hereafter to be detailed.” (A transcription of the full dispatch may be found HERE.)

Who Was Ben Butler?

Benjamin Franklin Butler (Nov. 5, 1818 – Jan. 11, 1893) was truthfully more of a

civilian and politician than a military man. Born in New Hampshire and raised in Massachusetts, he was a successful lawyer who left a somewhat controversial Civil War legacy. Butler was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1840 and served terms in both the House of Representatives and Senate of the Commonwealth during the 1850s. Despite having had no formal military training, he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General of the Massachusetts Militia in 1855. In 1859, Butler had voted for Jefferson Davis to be the next President of the United States. He was a Democrat but also believed in the supremacy of the Constitution of the United States. He therefore was eager to lend his services to the aide of Washington, D.C. and the Union cause.

By April of 1861, tensions were extremely high: Fort Sumter had been captured by rebel forces, eight southern states had seceded from the Union, and it was feared that Maryland, a slave state surrounding the capital city, would secede as well. In May, General Butler and his troops from Massachusetts were some of the first to come to the defense of Washington, D.C. Butler had stationed his troops in Baltimore to help prevent any further riots from occurring (a violent clash between civilians with Confederate flags who attacked Federal troops on April 19th had resulted in the deaths of nine civilians and four soldiers). On May 14th, Butler, now in charge of the Department of Annapolis, issued a proclamation stating, “no flag, banner, ensign, or device of the so-called Confederate States, or any of them, will be permitted to be raised or shown in this department.”