Description

Contraband – Slaves

Captured, Fugitive and Emancipated Slaves

Regarded as Contraband During the Civil War

A Collection of articles from the RICHMOND DAILY DISPATCH

of Richmond, Virginia 1860 – 1865

June 1, 1861

     History is not unfamiliar with the idea of rebellious provinces and revolting colonies; but the term rebellious States is novel and of recent coinage. A State is a community endowed with the attributes of sovereignty, one of which is the right  to make and unmake treaties, to form and dissolve alliances, to enter into and withdraw from Confederations, to dispose of its own destiny. A province is a boy under age, a State is a man over twenty-one. That Virginia is a State, That South Carolina is a State, that Louisiana is a State, there is no man fool-hardy enough to deny; and that the State is superior to the colony is the very attribute of sovereignty, which conveys the power to dispose of its own destiny, cannot be disputed by any man who admits the force of reason, logic, settled law or public opinion…

     The epithet “rebellious States” is, therefore, a contradiction in terms. There may be rebellious citizens, rebellious provinces, rebellious colonies, rebellious districts, but such a thing as a rebellious State there cannot be. When a State takes action, it is sovereignty which moves, and that sovereignty knows no superior authority against which it can be in rebellion… When, therefore, Northern journals speak of the Southern as “rebellious States,” they at once disclose their ignorance of public law and their imbecile malice as enemies.

May 11, 1864

     The Yankees, so fertile in excuses for their outrages in this war, very readily invented the application of the term “contrabands” to Southern slaves…A cannon is a “contraband of war” in its route to the enemy’s ports; but if it is captured, it is no longer contraband to him. The poor negro, however, has a different fate. He is still doomed “contraband.”