Confederates' 'slave hunt' in North a military disgrace

CMWinkler

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Confederates' 'slave hunt' in North a military disgrace
June 30, 2013 12:16 am
negroes-driven-south_420.jpg

Library of Congress
This illustration, captioned "Negroes Driven South by Rebel Officers," appeared in Harper's Weekly for Nov. 8, 1862. The purpose of the roundup, which occurred near Leesburg, Va., in early November 1862, was to move the enslaved people farther south as Union forces approached, the editor wrote.
  • negroes-driven-south_420.jpg
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For the rest: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories...ave-hunt-in-north-a-military-disgrace-693717/
By Frank Reeves / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
In June 1863, when Brig. Gen. Albert Jenkins' cavalry, in the vanguard of the Confederate army, galloped into Pennsylvania, its aim wasn't only to spy and steal supplies.
The soldiers were also determined, as historian Margaret Creighton notes, to round up African-Americans, whom the Confederates regarded as "contraband" that should be returned to "rightful" owners.
The "slave hunt," as contemporaries and later historians called this phase of the Confederate invasion, would last as long as Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia remained in Pennsylvania. It ended only when the defeated Southern troops retreated back to Virginia after the Battle of Gettysburg.

For the rest:
 
Militarily this was a bad idea, as it required diversion of manpower to escort the "contrabands" back to Confederate territory. But politically, this was potentially an even worse idea: it illustrated what could possibly happen should the CSA gain independence, either fully or through a truce (de jure vs. de facto)- Confederate raiding parties crossing into the US and forcible seizing its citizens. Wasn't the impressment of sailors one of the causes of the War of 1812? Could/would the US sit idly by and allow these raids to take place? Pennsylvania is far enough removed from any potential US/CS border that blacks should be safe, and yet they weren't...

Would the CS government have prohibited such raiding? Hard to say- slaves would still try to escape and head north, even more so knowing that it was a foreign country with no obligation to return them. Slave owners would have legitimate grievances if their "property" had fled north and wasn't returned. Would the CS govt have covered their losses? Sued the US govt? Turned a blind eye to raiding parties?

All speculative- but certainly the idea that bands of southern soldiers could round up US citizens and take them into bondage must have added to the northern determination to fight- it's one thing when the argument is about slavery hundreds of miles away. It's quite different when the argument is the farm next door.
 
Well, the link in the original post is not working. A while back, I started some research on the actual numbers of free blacks that may have been taken south during the Gettysburg Campaign. I was never able to find any numbers in primary sources, one Confederate eye-witness account that saw it taking place was could evidence. Many authors quote secondary sources about various information building on the taking of "contraband" being a big priority. Was it? Does anyone have any documented numbers? Also, I believe it was Butler that coined the phase for blacks to be called contraband in his area of operations but would the Confederates limit that terms usage?
 
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