Mounted albumen photograph of a group of seven African American ‘contrabands’ at a Union army camp in Bermuda Hundred, Virginia. As was a common wartime practice, the men wear a mix of surplus Union army clothing: sack coats, great coats, forage caps, and trousers. They stand in front of a ramshackle barracks and wagon.
During the Civil War, African Americans throughout the South sought freedom and safety behind Union lines. Many of these formerly enslaved people – particularly men and boys – were pressed into service as cooks, teamsters, carpenters, and other labor-intensive roles to help support the Northern war effort. The term ‘contrabands’ can be credited largely to Gen. Benjamin Butler, who refused to return runaway slaves to their masters in Confederate states under the theory that because these states had left the United States, federal laws such as the Fugitive Slave Act no longer applied. Hence, his army would instead keep runaway slaves as ‘contraband’ – property to be used against the Union by an enemy force.
By the end of the War, some 500,000 former slaves had sought the protection offered by Union lines. The seven men pictured here serve as a very suitable reminder of this practice. This original image was taken in 1864; a similarly mounted example is housed in the Library of Congress and credited to artist John C. Taylor of Hartford. Connecticut. Measures approximately 3.5” by 3.75”.


[African Americana, African-American History, Slave, Slavery, Abolition, Liberia] [Prints, Engravings, Lithographs, Ephemera]. [Slave, Abolition, African Americana, Civil War, Prints] [African American History, Black Americana] [Abraham Lincoln, Union, Confederate, Frederick Douglass, Abolitionist, 13th Amendment, Emancipation Proclamation, Gettysburg, John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Barack, Obama] [Daguerreotype, Ambrotype, Tintype, CDV, Albumen, carte-de-visite, Salt print, Cabinet Card]