Throughout the whole history of the South, by no means the least of the
evils entailed by the institution of slavery was the dread of slave
insurrections which haunted every master's household; and this vague
terror was at once intensified by the outbreak of civil war. It stands
to the lasting credit of the negro race in the United States that the
wrongs of their long bondage provoked them to no such crime, and that
the Civil War appears not to have even suggested, much less started, any
such organization or attempt. But the John Brown raid had indicated some
possibility of the kind, and when the Union troops began their movements
Generals Butler in Maryland and Patterson in Pennsylvania, moving
toward Harper's Ferry, and McClellan in West Virginia, in order to
reassure non-combatants, severally issued orders that all attempts at
slave insurrection should be suppressed. It was a most pointed and
significant warning to the leaders of the rebellion how much more
vulnerable the peculiar institution was in war than in peace, and that
their ill-considered scheme to protect and perpetuate slavery would
prove the most potent engine for its destruction.
The first effect of opening hostilities was to give adventurous or
discontented slaves the chance to escape into Union camps, where, even
against orders to the contrary, they found practical means of protection
or concealment for the sake of the help they could render as cooks,
servants, or teamsters, or for the information they could give or
obtain, or the invaluable service they could render as guides.
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