[b]OLD NEWS[/b] -[i] February & March 2012[/i]

Benjamin F. Butler was a lawyer who became a powerful politician in the state legislature of Massachusetts State Militia.  Butler was 42 years old when the American Civil War began in April of 1861.  By that time, he had risen to the rank of brigadier general in the state militia.

Butler had no combat experience, but on May 16 President Abraham Lincoln commissioned him a major general of volunteers in the United States Army.  The appointment of "political generals" like Butler was a method of raising troops to contend with sudden military emergencies; Lincoln correctly judged that many thousands of Massachusetts voters would volunteer to fight under Butler's command.

On May 22 General Butler took command of Fort Monroe on the southern tip of the Virginia Peninsula.  Virginia's legislature had voted on April 17 to secede from the Union and join the Confederate States of America, so Butler expected that the Virginia State Militia would soon attack Fort Monroe.  A few days before Butler's arrival by ship at this federal bastion, a newly built Virginian battery at nearby Sewell's Point had exchanged fire with federal gunboats.

On the morning of May 23, Butler was told that three fugitive slaves had fled Sewell's Point by boat and arrived at Fort Monroe during the night.  Eager to learn the condition of the Confederate battery, Butler interviewed the men.  They informed him that they had been working on the battery; it had only two guns, but more guns were expected to arrive soon.

Butler asked the identity of their master and the reason for their flight.  The slaves said that they were owned by Colonel Charles K. Mallory, the commander of Virginian troops on the district.  They had to run away because they were about to be taken from their families and sent to North Carolina to build fortifications there.

Butler had to decide what to do with the three men.  He personally favored the abolition of slavery, but he knew that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 obliged him to return runaway slaves to their masters.  On the other hand, if he returned the slaves, they would be used to build fortifications to attack the military of the United States.  Rather than return the men to the enemy, Butler decided to put them to work at Fort Monroe.

The following day Butler learned that a Confederate officer bearing a flag of truce was at the picket line, asking to enter the fort.  Butler wrote in his memoir, "As I did not wish to allow officers of the enemy to come inside the fort just then, and see us piling up sand bags to protect the weak points there, I directed the bearer of the flag to be informed that I would be at the picket line in an hour."

Butler rode out to the picket line, where he met Major John Cary of the 115th Virginia Militia.  According to Butler, Cary said: "I am informed that three Negroes belonging to Colonel Mallory have escaped within your lines.  I am Colonel Mallory's agent and have charge of this property.  What do you intend to do with those Negroes?"

Butler answered, "I intend to hold them."

"Do you mean then," asked Cary, "to set aside your constitutional obligations to return them?"

"I mean to take Virginia at her word," Butler responded.  "I am under no constitutional obligations to a foreign country, which Virginia now claims to be."

"But you say we cannot secede," Cary answered, "and so you cannot consistently detain the Negroes."

"But you say you have seceded," replied Butler, "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.  The question is simply whether they shall be used for or against the government of the United States.  Yet, though I greatly need the labor which has providentially come to my hands, if Colonel Mallory will come into the fort and take the oath of allegiance to the United States, he shall have his Negroes, and I will endeavor to hire them from him."

Major Cary responded, "Colonel Mallory is absent."  Both men knew that Colonel Mallory had no intention of taking the oath of allegiance, so they ended the meeting, and Butler returned to the fort.

As an experienced lawyer, Butler felt that he had invented a good rationale for not returning the fugitive slaves to an enemy in a time of war.  He had effectively set the slaves free--but he congratulated himself on having neatly sidestepped the legal minefield into which he would have stumbled if he had openly declared that he was freeing them.  Instead, he had argued that the slaves were "contraband"--illegally held property, like the goods carried by smugglers.

Butler knew that President Lincoln, despite being personally opposed to slavery, had stated in his inaugural address on march 4 that he had "no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists."  Butler hoped that the Lincoln administration would nevertheless accept his argument that, "contraband" slaves could be effectively liberated.

On May 25 Butler wrote to the head of the army, Lieutenant Winfield Scott: "The Negroes in this neighborhood are now being employed in the erection of batteries and other works by the Rebels which it would be quite impossible to construct without their labor."  He asked, "Shall they be allowed the use of this property against the United States and we not be allowed its use in aid of the United States?"  Butler sent off the letter hoping for a prompt reply.

The next day eight more fugitives arrive, then on the following day, another 47.  It became evident to Butler that word was spreading among the blacks in the area that Fort Monroe was harboring fugitive slaves and offering them an opportunity for freedom.

As increasing numbers of fugitive slaves presented themselves at the fort, Butler pressured his superiors to approve his actions.  On May 27 he wrote another letter to Scott, making a case for accepting all comers: "Since I  wrote my last dispatch the question in regard to slave property is becoming one of very serious magnitude. ...  I have had come within my lines men and women with their children, entire families. ... 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."

Emphasizing the military nature of his concern, Butler wrote: "Twelve of these Negroes, I am informed, have escaped from the batteries on Sewell's Point, which, this morning fired upon my expedition. ...  As a military question it would seem to be a measure of necessity to deprive their masters of their service. ...  As a political question and a question of humanity, can I receive the services of a father and mother, and not take the children? ... I therefore submit all this to your better judgment."

Butler knew that the guidance he sought was not of a military nature.  He wrote, "As the questions have a political aspect, I have ventured ... to duplicate the parts of my dispatch relating to this subject, and forward them to the Secretary of War."

Secretary of war Simon Cameron wrote Butler on May 30: "Sir: Your action in respect to the Negroes who came within your lines from the service of the rebels is approved. ... Refrain from surrendering to alleged masters any person who may come within your lines.

"You will employ such persons in the services to which they may be best adapted, keeping an account of the labor by them performed, of the value of it, and the expenses of their maintenance.  The question of their final disposition will be reserved for future determination."

Butler was somewhat reassured by Cameron's orders, but it disturbed him that the ultimate status of the fugitive slaves remained unclear.  He continued welcoming them, and he hoped that public opinion in the North would force the federal government to officially grant them their freedom.

News of the events at Fort Monroe was reported in northern newspapers.  On June 8 [i]Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper[/i], under the headline "Negroes Take Refuge at Fort Monroe," described Butler's encounter with Major Cary and his decision to give the fugitive slaves and their families protection and to pay them for their services.

By the end of June, 500 fugitive slaves had arrived at the fort.  A [i]New York Times[/i] reporter wrote, "Their shovels and their other implements of labor they handle and carry as soldiers do their guns."  Many of the soldiers under Butler's command, young recruits from New England, were seeing slaves for the first time, and some were surprised to learn that they were not happy to be slaves.  One soldier wrote home: "There is a universal desire among the slaves to be free. ... Even old men and women with crooked backs, who could hardly walk or see, shared the same feeling."

Butler could not house the refugees inside the fort.  Instead he allowed them to settle in the burned-out ruins of nearby Hampton, which had been abandoned by the Confederates.  The fugitives built shelters using whatever they could find, and they called the settlement "Slabtown."  Butler paid able-bodied men to build defenses for the settlement, and he supplied a small force of soldiers to protect the fugitive slaves from what he called "marauding parties of rebels."  Those adults not employed by the army planted vegetable gardens and kept animals to feed their families, selling surplus to the troops.

During June and July, the settlement was a hive of activity: men were building, women were washing, marketing and taking care of the clothes of the soldiers.

Butler hoped that the entire Union army would adopt his policy of offering protection to slaves who fled from their masters, so he was annoyed when he saw an order issued by Union General Irvin McDowell, commander of the Army of North-eastern Virginia, prohibiting fugitive slaves from entering or being harbored within his lines.

On July 30 Butler wrote again to Cameron, asking "Is that order to be enforced in all military department?  If so, who is to be considered a fugitive slave? ... Is it forbidden to the troops to aid or harbor within their lines the Negro children who are found therein? ... I write in no spirit of criticism, but simply to explain the full difficulties that surround the enforcing it."

Cameron responded on August 8, informing Butler that Congress had just passed a resolution stating that masters who used slaves to support the insurrection forfeited the rights to the services of those slaves.  Therefore, Cameron wrote, military commanders should not return slaves to their masters.

Following Congress's admonition, most federal commander allowed fugitive slaves inside their lines after the summer of 1861, but some refused.  In the face of this refusal, Congress passed a bill in March of 1862, prohibiting the military from returning slaves to their masters.

During the rest of the American Civil War, slaves attached themselves to Union camps wherever federal troops held territory in the Confederacy; and northern abolitionists, encouraged by Butler's actions, began a forceful effort to redefine the war as a fight against slavery, putting political pressure on Lincoln to free the slaves.

In September of 1862, President Lincoln announced that all slaves in rebel states (over three million people) would be emancipated at the beginning of the following  year.  Four months later, when Lincoln made his Emancipation Proclamation, all "contrabands" and slaves within federally controlled areas of the Confederacy were freed immediately.  Soon after it was issued, the proclamation was publicly announced beneath the boughs of a large oak tree at Slabtown, making slaves who had taken refuge under Butler's protection the first to learn of their permanent freedom.  Slaves behind Confederate lines remained in captivity, but they quickly learned that a Union victory would assure their freedom.  The Emancipation Proclamation redefined the federal goal of the war as not just to preserve the Union, but also to end slavery.

North American slavery finally ended in December of 1865, when Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.  By that time, General Butler had earned a reputation as an ineffective military leader, but his political popularity in the North was not diminished by his battlefield failures.  Butler's important role in ending slavery made him an enduring hero to abolitionists.  After being quietly forced out of the army, he resumed his successful career as a politician, becoming one of the most powerful men in the United States Congress before winning election as the 33rd governor of Massachusetts in 1883.