Practically, therefore, at the very beginning, the war created a bond of
mutual sympathy based on mutual helpfulness, between the Southern negro
and the Union volunteer; and as fast as the Union troops advanced, and
secession masters fled, more or less slaves found liberation and refuge
in the Union camps.
At some points, indeed, this tendency created an embarrassment to Union
commanders. A few days after General Butler assumed command of the Union
troops at Fortress Monroe, the agent of a rebel master who had fled from
the neighborhood came to demand, under the provisions of the
fugitive-slave law, three field hands alleged to be in Butler's camp.
Butler responded that as Virginia claimed to be a foreign country the
fugitive-slave law was clearly inoperative, unless the owner would come
and take an oath of allegiance to the United States. In connection with
this incident, the newspaper report stated that as the breastworks and
batteries which had been so rapidly erected for Confederate defense in
every direction on the Virginia peninsula were built by enforced negro
labor under rigorous military impressment, negroes were manifestly
contraband of war under international law. The dictum was so pertinent,
and the equity so plain, that, though it was not officially formulated
by the general until two months later, it sprang at once into popular
acceptance and application; and from that time forward the words "slave"
and "negro" were everywhere within the Union lines replaced by the
familiar, significant term "contraband.
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