Contraband (American Civil War)

Contraband was a term commonly used in the US military during the American Civil War to describe a new status for certain people who escaped slavery or those who affiliated with Union forces. In August 1861, the Union Army and the US Congress determined that the US would no longer return people who escaped slavery who went to Union lines, but they would be classified as "contraband of war," or captured enemy property. They used many as laborers to support Union efforts and soon began to pay wages.

These self-emancipated freedmen set up camps near Union forces, often with army assistance and supervision. The army helped to support and educate both adults and children among the refugees. Thousands of men from these camps enlisted in the United States Colored Troops when recruitment started in 1863.

One particular contraband camp, which had 6,000 "runaway negroes", was in Natchez, Mississippi, and was visited by General Ulysses S. Grant with some of his family and staff in 1863.^[1]

By the end of the war, more than one hundred contraband camps were operating in the Southern United States, including the Freedmen's Colony of Roanoke Island, North Carolina. In Roanoke Island, approximately 3,500 formerly enslaved people worked to develop a self-sufficient community.

Contraband refugee camps have been described as "simultaneously humanitarian crises and incubators for a new relationship between African Americans and the U.S. government."^[2]