Shepard, Baker and Townsend sounds like the name of a law firm. Instead, they were the names of liberators, are the surnames of three enslaved black men, who fled to Fortress Monroe in Virginia, rather than to keep working on Confederate artillery placements to bomb that fort. Their bodily presence forced the issue of black identity front and center. General Benjamin F. Butler, a lawyer was no fool! Why return the likes of these three visionaries to the Confederates, under a Fugitive Slave Act of the nation it had seceded from?
So, he classified them as "Contraband of War." Technically compliant with the law, but eminently expedient to himself and to his military command; also loss to the enemy-Confederacy. Hearing of this policy, slaves everywhere came on like "cities" from plantations to nearby Union lines, forcing Congress, Lincoln, generals to accede to the practical utility and the double benefit that this avalanche, of black freedom-fighting and Union saving-manpower physically represented both near and long term.
https://savingplaces.org/stories/the-forgotten-the-contraband-of-america-and-the-road-to-freedom?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=weekly&utm_content=20180201#.WnNxRtQrLDc
Shepard, Baker and Townsend sounds like the name of a law firm. Instead, they were the names of liberators, are the surnames of three enslaved black men, who fled to Fortress Monroe in Virginia, rather than to keep working on Confederate artillery placements to bomb that fort. Their bodily presence forced the issue of black identity front and center. General Benjamin F. Butler, a lawyer was no fool! Why return the likes of these three visionaries to the Confederates, under a Fugitive Slave Act of the nation it had seceded from?
So, he classified them as "Contraband of War." Technically compliant with the law, but eminently expedient to himself and to his military command; also loss to the enemy-Confederacy. Hearing of this policy, slaves everywhere came on like "cities" from plantations to nearby Union lines, forcing Congress, Lincoln, generals to accede to the practical utility and the double benefit that this avalanche, of black freedom-fighting and Union saving-manpower physically represented both near and long term.
https://savingplaces.org/stories/the-forgotten-the-contraband-of-america-and-the-road-to-freedom?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=weekly&utm_content=20180201#.WnNxRtQrLDc
