Slave Contraband Camps during the Civil War (1861-1863)

From 1861 to 1863 the Union struggled to deal not only with their military defeats at the hands of the Confederacy, but also with the "Negro Question," as the Union Anny advanced and the Civil War intensified. Hundreds of runaway slaves streamed into Union lines in Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia, coastal North Carolina, South Carolina, and south­ eastern Louisiana. 

At the start of the war, Lincoln required his troops to return these slaves to their masters. He insisted that this was not a war to end slavery, but to bring the South back into the Union. Many Union generals, how­ ever, found returning slaves to their masters, the enemy, problematic, and they began to enlist the slaves as soldiers and laborers. Lincoln took issue with this because it indeed gave the impression that the war was about slavery. A compromise of sorts was reached in 1862 with the passage of the Contraband Act by Congress. Slaves were then viewed as contraband of war and were placed in internment camps, where they were held rather than returned to the southerners but forbidden to be used by Union generals to support the war effort as either troops or laborers. 

There were several of these camps in territory occupied by the Union between 1862 and 1863. Conditions in the camps were terrible, and hundreds of slaves died from disease, lack of proper shelter, and poor diet. In response to these problems, a number of religious and social groups traveled to these camps and supervised improvements such as better sanitation, food, and living conditions. These groups also lobbied Congress and the president to dismantle the camps, some­thing that would not happen until January of l 863.