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The initial Federal answer to the legal status of the runaway slaves was to classify them as 'contraband of war'. This is not a very inspiring term for what was in fact the initial step toward the towering achievement of emancipation. After Fort Sumter and the onset of the War, Federal officers with abolitionist leanings began freeing slaves. Lincoln was horrified, not because he was not sympathetic, but because of the political implications. One of his first priorities was to hold the critically important Border States in the Union. These were slave states which had not succeeded, but each was teetering. If the War was proclaimed to free the slaves, he would have lost some if not all of them. By making the war an effort to preserve the Union, he held each of them. The same was true of the northern free states. There were abolitionists in the North willing to fight to end slavery. But there were also many who had no desire to risk life and limb to free the slaves. On the other hand, there was widespread support for preserving the Union. Thus Lincoln not only engineered the South firing the first shots of the war, but making the Union cause the preservation of the Union. This frustrated many Federal officers who felt a moral obligation to free the slaves. Lincoln was forced to reprimand them and even dismissed Jonn C. Freemont who had been the first Republican candidate for president. (Freemont may have been morally right, but he lost the 1856 election. Lincoln won his election and because of it was in a position to free the slaves.) General Benjamin Butler faced with the problem of how to deal with runaways at Fort Monroe, Virginia devised an ingenious answer to the problem and one that would not undermine Lincoln's war policy. Butler is one of the most intriguing figures of the Civil War. He also became the most hated figure in the South--at least until Sherman's March Through Georgia. He became know as 'Beast Butler'. Beast or not, Butler had the political skills that many other abolitionist officers lacked. He understood Lincoln's dilemma and devised a politically astute policy. When a local slave owner demanded the return of his three slaves that had escaped into Fort Monroe, Butler adamantly refused. He did not free the three runaways, but refused to turn them over on the grounds that they were persons (the Confederacy called them property) being used to wage war against the Federal Government. He did not use the term contraband, but Lincoln did not reprimand him or countermand his action. And the term 'contraband of war' soon became widely used to describe the escaped slaves that reached Federal lines. It was commonly shortened to just 'Contrabands'. Congress saw this as the best way of addressing the issue and passed the First Confiscation Act. Lincoln was somewhat reluctant, but signed the bill into law (August 1861). The law provided that if slaves are (as Southern states maintained, in fact, property and if this property is owned by any person in active rebellion against lawful Federal authority, then the U.S. military has every right to deny its use to any such person. Any slave that could be wrested from the Confederacy would therefore become the property of the United States Federal Government. This opened the floodgates, within days, hundreds of runaway slaves were sheltering under the protective guns of Gen. Butler at Fort Monroe. And in the West, Federal victories mean that thousands and then tens of thousands of slaves flocked to Federal lines. And in the North as the war progressed, public opinion toward slavery began to change as voters who had not been abolitionists began to take issue with slavery. This would save the Union in the elections of 1862 and 1864. It us not entirely clear why this occurred, but apparently acrimony toward the Confederacy and its leaders gradually transformed into support for emancipation. The former slaves began arriving in such numbers that they set up camps near Union encampments and followed Federal field armies as they moved. This provided Union forces with needed labor support as given the increased lethality of arms, entrenchment became vital. The Army even helped support and educate both adults and children among the Contrbands. by the end of the War, more than 100 contraband camps were functioning throughout the South.
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