What’s in a word? by Warren Bull
public domain image
The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning. ATTRIBUTION: MARK TWAIN
As
Adam Goodheart the author of “1861:
The Civil War Awakening” wrote on April 1, 2011, wrote in the New
York Times Magazine, the right word can make the difference
between freedom and enslavement.
Although it seemed like a minor
event at the time, On May 23, 1861, of the American Civil War, three young black
men, Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory, and
James Townsend who had been pressed into service by the Confederacy to build on
artillery emplacement stole
a boat and rowed across the James River to claim asylum in Fort Monroe, Va. They reached the place
where, in 1619, when a
Dutch ship landed with some 20 African captives for the fledgling Virginia
Colony and slavery first arrived in the colonies.
President Abraham Lincoln had begun his inaugural address with
the words “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the
institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no
lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
At that time Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland where slavery
was legal had not yet chosen sides in the war. There was a real possibility of
some or all might join the Confederacy.
Major General Benjamin Franklin Butler arrived at the fort
only a day ahead of the fugitive slaves. He had been a General for all of four weeks.
Before that he had come from a background nearly as impoverished as Lincoln
and, despite being even uglier than the sixteenth President he had become a
very successful lawyer with a reputation for nitpicking, quibbling and knowing
obscure common law. He had also been a popular politician. He interviewed the
black men, but before he could report to Washington, D.C. Major A Confederate
officer, John Baytop Cary, appeared and demanded the return of the escaped slaves.
Adam Goodheart describes what happened then:
Cary
got down to business. “I am informed,” he said, “that three Negroes belonging
to Colonel Mallory have escaped within your lines. I am Colonel Mallory’s agent
and have charge of his property. What do you mean to do with those Negroes?”
“I
intend to hold them,” Butler said.
“Do
you mean, then, to set aside your constitutional obligation to return them?”
Even
the dour Butler must have found it hard to suppress a smile. This was, of
course, a question he had expected. And he had prepared what he thought was a
fairly clever answer.
“I
mean to take Virginia at her word,” he said. “I am under no constitutional
obligations to a foreign country; which Virginia now claims to be.”
“But
you say we cannot secede,” Cary retorted, “and so you cannot consistently
detain the Negroes.”
“But
you say you have seceded,” Butler said, “so you cannot consistently claim them.
I shall hold these Negroes as contraband of war since they are engaged in the
construction of your battery and are claimed as your property.”
Whatever else he may have been, Butler was an expert on the
details of the law. He knew from his studies that he could have seized a
shipment of shovels that could be used to construct a gun emplacement. If
the Confederates declared these men were property, as they did, he could
equally well seize the men using the shovels.
Butler finally wrote the report and sent it to Washington,
D.C. by which time it was already out of date. One day 8 more fugitives
arrived. 47 came the next day including an elderly man and a babe in arms. One
soldier wrote home that fugitives arrived “hourly.”
The Lincoln Administration’s response was worthy of
bureaucracy’s highest honor. It considered the issue with due deliberation and
serious study. Then it took no action and made no official statement.
“Contraband” quickly became the description of all formerly enslaved people who
showed up seeking asylum with northern forces.
Somehow the ironic term proved acceptable. People who hated
“emancipated’ accepted “confiscated.” The Emancipation Proclamation in 1862
accepted the twisted logic Butler concocted. It was a temporary war document that
supposedly deprived the parts of the Confederacy still in rebellion of a war
resource - slaves. What many people then did not notice was that
at least 20,000 people were immediately freed from slavery.
Contrabands embraced
the term. Long before the rest of the population figured it out, people knew
that, once freed, they would never be enslaved again.