Chapter 2 Slow Road To Freedom

We’re going to leave those 200 enslaved Americans stranded at Fort Donelson for just a little while, so we can gain some insight into the questions we left hanging: Who were the enslaved Americans left at Fort Donelson? Why did they stay? What was their legal status? What do they have to do with freedom in Memphis? To help answer those questions, we’re going back in time to April of 1861, to a place called Fortress Monroe, VA. In May of 1861, about six weeks after the war began, Fortress Monroe was commanded by Gen Benjamin Butler. He was more lawyer and politician than he was a soldier, and he was a pro-slavery Northern Democrat. These ironic and perhaps conflicting qualities, made him (IMHO) an effective garrison commander. The story goes, as Butler was about the business of exerting his authority in and around the small town of Hampton just outside of the fortress, three enslaved Americans; Frank Baker, James Townsend, and Shepard Mallory, showed up at one of the Union camps outside the fortress to turn themselves over to the US government. Their enslaver, one Col Charles King Mallory (notice anything about the last names?) sent a representative to Butler to reclaim his “property.” His claim was based on the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Long story short, Butler said (and I’m paraphrasing); No…because first of all you claim that Virginia is no longer a member of the Union, so that law doesn’t apply. Secondly, you are using these men to aid the Confederacy. That makes them “Contraband of War.” Now, go away. By the end of July, three contrabands had grown to over 900, mostly put work maintaining the fortress and surrounding camps. In addition, these so called contrabands began to develop their own villages, complete with houses, small farms and even small businesses, and the trend was not confined to Fortress Monroe, Port Royal for example. It wasn’t until August of 1861 that Congress passed and Lincoln signed the First Confiscation Act, which authorized the military to seize Confederate property used for the purposes of war. Two points concerning that are important to remember: • The contrabands were considered “property under the protection of the U S Military.” • The act only applied to enslaved Americans who were employed by the Confederate military Bigger Picture During the first year of the war, President Abraham Lincoln was reluctant to make slavery, much less emancipation, a war issue. He resisted the practice of relieving the Confederacy of their human property, and insisted that the sole aim of the war was to preserve the Union. Even as late as August of 1862 (after he revealed an early draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet) Lincoln refused to definitively admit that abolition in the South should be a primary aim of the war. In a letter to Horace Greeley, he wrote: "If I could save the union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." In the face of Lincoln’s equivocations and reluctance the Northern Black journalists, Frederick Douglass being the most prominent among them, took issue with his reluctance. Douglass wrote: "We wage war against slaveholding rebels and yet protect…the motive… We strike at the effect, and leave the cause unharmed." But for all the rhetoric and heated debate, it was the enslaved Americans themselves that made slavery and abolition a key issue of the war. THEY left their enslavers, and flocked to the Union lines up and down the East Coast. They formed communities, and brought in the crops for their own good. And it was THEY who made the Northern politicians and the Union military commanders take notice of both the challenges and opportunities THEY represented. With that, I throw the questions back to you: • Who were the enslaved Americans left at Fort Donelson? • Why did they stay? • What was their legal status? • What do they have to do with freedom in Memphis?