A slave by any other name…
Contraband: goods prohibited by law or treaty from being
imported or exported
Camp: a place where an army or other group of
persons or an individual is lodged in a tent or tents or other temporary means
of shelter.
The
politics facing General Grant were simple: the escapees could not be classified as free; they could not be shipped
north or west. Nor could they be
colonized to Haiti
or another Southern destination, a goal the future President Grant would later
cling to. The answer then had to be the
Contraband Camp.
Union General Benjamin Butler had
already pioneered the concept in Virginia
when a Confederate leader had actually demanded the return of escape slaves
under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Butler had declared the
escaped slaves “contraband,” a formulation that had pleased the conservatives
in Congress, while keeping the humans in question out of the hands of the
Confederates.
Grant
appointed the young chaplain John Eaton as General Superintendent of
Contrabands for the Department of the Tennessee,
and Chaplain James Alexander was made the commandant of in the camp in Corinth. Alexander and the camp both quickly proved
their worth.