Viewing page 12 of 16
This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
524 DOUGLASS' MONTHLY. SEPTEMBER, 1861 THE CONTRABAND QUESTION. GENERAL BUTLER TO SECRETARY CAMERON. "HEADQUARTERS DEP'T OF VIRGINIA, FORTRESS MONROE, JULY 30, 1861. "HON. SIMON CAMERON, SECRETARY OF WAR, Sir: By an order received on the morning of the 26th July from Major General Dix, by a telegraphic order from Lieutenant General Scott, I was commanded to forward of the troops of this department, four regiments and a half, including Col. Baker's California Regiment, to Washington via Baltimore.— This order reached me at 2 o'clock A.M., by special boat from Baltimore. Believing that it emanated because of some pressing exigency for the defence of Washington, I issued my orders before daybreak for the embarkation of the troops, sending those who were among the very best regiments I had. In the course of the following day they were all embarked for Baltimore, with the exception of some 400 for whom I had not transportation, although I had all the transport force in the hands of the Quartermaster here, to aid the Bay line of steamers, which by the same order from the Lieutenant General, was directed to find transportation. Up to, and at the time of the order, I had been preparing for an advance movement by which I hoped to cripple the resources of the enemy at Yorktown, and especially by seizing a large quantity of negroes who were being pressed into their service in building the entrenchments there. I had five days previous then enabled to mount for the first time, the first company of Light Artillery which I had been empowered to raise, and they had but a single rifled canon, and iron six pounder. Of course everything must and did yield to the supposed exigency of the orders. This ordering away the troops from this department, while it weakened the post at Newport News, necessitated the withdrawal of the troops from Hampton, where I was then throwing up entrenched works to enable me to hold the town with a small force, while I advanced up the York or James river. In the village of Hampton there were a large number of negroes, composed in a great measure of women and children of the men who had fled thither within my lines for protection, who had escaped from marauding parties of Rebels who had been gathering up able bodied Blacks to aid them in constructing their batteries on the James and York rivers. I had employed the men in Hampton Inn throwing up entrenchments, and they were working zealously and efficiently at that duty, saving our soldiers from that labor under the gleam of the mid-day sun.— The women were earning substantially their own subsistence in washing, marketing, and taking care of the clothes of the soldiers, and rations were being served out to the men who worked for the support of the children. But by the evacuation of Hampton, rendered necessary by the withdrawal of troops, leaving the scarcely 5,000 men outside of the Fort, including the force at Newport News, all these black people were obliged to break up their homes in Hampton, fleeing across the creek within my lines for protection and support.— Indeed it was a most distressing site, to see these poor creatures, who had trusted to the protection of the arms of the United States, and who aided the troops of the United States in their enterprise, to be thus obliged to flee from their homes; and the homes of their masters who had deserted them, and become not fugitives from fear of the return of the Rebel soldiery, who had threatened to shoot the men who had wrought for us, and to carry off the women who had served us, to a worse than Egyptian bondage. I have therefore now within the Peninsula, this side of Hampton Creek, 900 negroes, 300 of whom are able-bodied men, 30 of whom are men substantially past hard labor, 175 women, 225 children under the age of ten years, and 170 between 10 and 18 years, and many more coming in. The questions which this state of facts present are very embarrassing. "First— What shall be done with them? and Second, What is their state and condition? "Upon these questions I desire the instructions of the Department. "The first question, however, may perhaps be answered by considering the last. Are these men, women, and children slaves?-— Are they free? Is their condition that of men, women, and children, or of property, or is it a mixed relation? What their status was under the Constitution and laws we all know. What has been the effect of rebellion and a state of war upon that status? When I adopted the theory of treating the able-bodied negro fit to work in the trenches, as property liable to be used in aid of rebellion, and so contraband of war, that condition of things was in so far met as I then and still believe, on a legal and constitutional basis.— But now a new series of questions arise.— Passing by women, the children certainly cannot be treated on that basis; if property, they must be considered the encumbrance, rather than the auxiliary of an army, and of course, in no possible legal relation, could be treated as contraband. Are they property? If they were so, they have been left by their masters and owners, deserted, thrown away, abandoned, like the wrecked vessel upon the ocean. Their former possessors and owners, have causelessly, traitorously, rebelliously, and to carry out the figure practically abandoned them to be swallowed up by the winter storm of starvation. If property do they not become the property of the salvors? but we, there salvors, do not need and will not hold such property and will assume no such ownership; has not, therefore, all property relation ceased? Have they not become thereupon men, women, and children? No longer under ownership of any kind, the fearful relicts of fugitive masters, have they not by their master's acts, and the state of war, assumed the condition, which we hold to be the normal one, of those made in God's image. Is not every constitutional, legal, and moral requirement, as well as to the runaway master as they are relinquished slaves, thus answered? I confess that my own mind is compelled by this reasoning to look upon them as men and women. If not free born, yet free, manumitted, sent forth from the hand that held them never to be reclaimed. "Of course if this reasoning thus imperfectly set forth is correct, my duty as a humane man is very plain. I should take the same care of these men, women and children, houseless, homeless, and unprovided for, as I would of the same number of men, women, and children, for their attachment to the Union had been driven or allowed to flee from the Confederate States. I should have no doubt on this question, had I not seen it stated, that an order had been issued by General McDowell in his department, substantially forbiding all fugitive slaves from coming within his lines, or being harbored there. Is that order to be enforced in all Military Departments? If so, who are to be considered fugitive slaves? Is a slave to be considered fugitive, whose master runs away and leaves him? Is it forbidden to the troops to aid or harbor within their lines the negro children who are found therein, or is the soldier, when his marches destroyed their means of subsistence, to allow them to starve because he has driven off the Rebel master. Now shall the commander of regiment or battalion sit in judgment upon the question, whether any given black man has fled from his master, or his master fled from him? Indeed, how are the free born to be distinguished? Is one any more or less a fugitive slave because he has labored upon the Rebel entrenchments? If he has so labored, if I understand it, he is to be harbored. By the reception of which, are the Rebels most to be distressed, by taking those who have wrought all their Rebel masters desired, masked their battery, or those who have refused to labor and left the battery unmasked. "I have very decided opinions upon the subject of this order. It does not become me to criticize it, and I write in no spirit of criticism, but simply to explain the full difficulties that surround the enforcing it. If the enforcement of that order becomes the policy of the government, I, as a soldier, shall be bound to enforce it steadfastly, if not cheerfully. But if left to my own discretion, as you may have gathered from my reasoning, I should take a widely different course from that which it indicates. "In a loyal State I would put down a servile insurrection. In a state of rebellion I would confiscate that which was used to oppose my arms, and take all that property which constituted the wealth of that State and furnish the means by which the war is prosecuted, beside being the cause of the war; and if, in so doing, it should be objected that human beings were brought to the free enjoyment of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, such objection might not require much consideration. "Pardon me for addressing the Secretary Of War directly upon this question, as it involves some political considerations as well as propriety of military action. "I am Sir, your obedient servant, BENJAMIN F. BUTLER." SECRETARY CAMERON'S REPLY. Washington, August, 1861. GENERAL:— The important question of the proper disposition to be made of fugitives from service in the States in insurrection against the Federal Government, to which you have again directed my attention, in your letter of July 30, has received my most attentive consideration. It is the desire of the President that all existing rights in all the States be fully respected and maintained.— The war now prosecuted on the part of the Federal Government is a war for the Union; for the preservation of all Constitutional rights of States and the citizens of States in the Union. Hence no question can arise as to fugitives from service within the States and Territories in which the authority of the Union is fully acknowledged. The ordinary forms of judicial proceedings must be respected by military and civil authorities alike for the enforcement of legal forms. But in the States wholly or in part under insurrectionary control, where the laws of the United States are so far opposed and resisted, that they cannot be effectually enforced, it is obvious that the rights dependent upon the execution of those laws must temporarily fail; and it is equally obvious that the rights dependent on the laws of the State within which military exigencies created by the insurrection, if not wholly forfeited by the treasonable conduct of parties claiming them. To this the general rule of rights to services forms an exception. The Act of Congress, approved August 6, 1861, declares that if persons held to service shall be employed in hostility to the United States, the right to their services shall be forfeited, and such persons shall be discharged therefrom. It follows, of necessity, that no claim can be recognized by the military authority of the Union, for the services of such persons, when fugitives. A more difficult question is presented in respect to persons escaping from the service of loyal masters. It is quite apparent that the laws of the State under which only the service of such fugitives can be claimed must needs be wholly, or almost wholly suspended. As to the remedies by the insurrection, and the military measures necessitated by it, it is equally apparent that the substitution of military for judicial measures for the enforcement of such claims, must be attended by great inconvenience, embarrassments and injuries. Under these circumstances, it seems quite clear that the substantial rights of local masters are still best protected by receiving such fugitives, as well as fugitives from disloyal masters, into the service of the United States, and employing them under such organizations and such occupation as circumstances may suggest or require. Of course a record should be kept, showing the name and description of the fugitives; the name and character, as loyal or disloyal, of the master; and such facts as may be necessary to a correct understanding of the circumstances of each case, after tranquility shall have been restored.— Upon the return of peace, Congress will doubtless properly provide for all the persons thus received into the service of the Union, and for a just compensation for loyal masters. In this way only, it would seem, can the duty and safety of the Government and the just rights of all be fully reconciled and harmonized. You will, therefore, consider yourself instructed to govern your future action in respect to fugitives from service by the premises herein stated, and will report from time to time, and at least twice in each month, your action in the premises to this Department. You will, however, neither authorized nor permit any interference by the troops under your command with the servants of
Transcription Notes:
Reviewed - removed unnecessary descriptions of format - see Instructions... & fixed a couple of typos
