Freedom seekers Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory, and James Townsend reach Union lines at Fort Monroe, Virginia on May 23, where Gen. Benjamin Butler refuses to return them to their Confederate slaveholder. The US War Department supports Butler’s claim that the freedom seekers can be confiscated as “contraband of war,” setting in motion the wartime alliance between enslaved people and the US Army.
1861 political cartoon on “contrabands” (Library of Congress)