Photograph by James F. Gibson, Library of Congress
Slaves who were considered contraband at the headquarters of General Lafayette, May 1862
Union Major General Benjamin Butler had an idea. As he commanded Fort Monroe, deep in Confederate territory in the rebellious state of Virginia, he realized the enemy was forcing enslaved people to construct siegeworks around his defenses. Because slaves were considered property, he reasoned, if they escaped to Union lines, he could confiscate them as contraband war material. Soon after, other Union generals did the same thing, and as word got out, more and more enslaved people, now known as “contraband,” fled the Confederacy. On August 6, 1861, Congress passed the Confiscation Act, which officially made the practice a law. Importantly, however, and with the consent of President Abraham Lincoln, who feared alienating Union slaveowners, the slaves were not freed, but became the property of the federal government. The verbose Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves, passed on March 13, 1862, further guaranteed that the escaped could stay behind Union lines and in Northern cities.
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Contraband slaves. Photograph by McPherson & Oliver, Baton Rouge, c. 1861–65, Library of Congress
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A possible contraband slave. Photograph by B. Moses, New Orleans, 1864–66, Library of Congress
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William Headly, c. 1862–65, Library of Congress
These two acts would have profound effects on Civil War St. Louis. As I’ve written before, control of the Gateway City was a major goal of both the Union and Confederacy, and by the end of 1861, St. Louis was firmly in the control of the former. According to pastor Galusha Anderson, author of The Story of a Border City during the Civil War, the city was flooded with upward of 40,000 refugees during the conflict. Anderson devotes a full chapter of the book on refugees, in which he includes the men and women who were considered contraband.
Missouri History Museum
An ink drawing of the Missouri Hotel, c. 1830
Anderson portrays the men and women who escaped into Union territory as hardworking and industrious, devout, and appreciative of finally being paid for their labor. Benton Barracks, on the northwest side of St. Louis, became a sort of employment agency. Wealthy St. Louisans would hire domestic help; women who were considered contraband would be paid $5 a month, which was substantially below what white men were paid in breweries and factories at the time, which was around $30 a month. Other African Americans worked in farms outside the city. A large number worked for the Union army itself, as there was still a large presence in St. Louis even as the war moved south. Men and women who were considered contraband could ride the streetcars to Benton Barracks but were not allowed to sit on the inside.
The Contraband Relief Society was chartered in February of 1863 by a group of women and based across the street from the famous Lindell Hotel on Washington Avenue. The Society collected food, bedding, and other supplies for those arriving in St. Louis. Many men and women lived at the Missouri Hotel at the southwest corner of Main and Morgan streets; it had once been famous but by the Civil War had fallen into disrepair. Anderson and others worked to teach former slaves how to read and write. After Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, even more enslaved people fled from the Confederacy.
St. Louis newspapers, particularly German-language dailies, made no pretense of not being pro-Union and anti-slavery, providing valuable updates to readers about contrabands’ contributions to the war effort. The Globe-Democrat, also fiercely pro-Union, reported on the strategic value they were providing the war effort, particularly in the building of fortifications in enemy territory. The Westliche Post almost gloatingly reported on how many people were fleeing to the army of Ulysses S. Grant.
The Anzeiger des Westens also gives information about where the Union army was housing African Americans in September of 1862. Besides the Missouri Hotel, the army also rented houses along Main Street, which was along the river, at the corner of Madison Street. However, due to the number of jobs around Benton Barracks, people began to settle in camps around the Union base of operations. It was also for safety; there was still a considerable threat and occasional real outbreak of violence in the city. In New York, the Draft Riots of 1863 had led to the lynching of at least 11 African Americans.
While many enslaved people were able to secure passage on riverboats heading north on the Mississippi River, others had to make their way by foot through treacherous territory. Anderson relates two particularly harrowing stories. Those considered contraband arriving by foot in St. Louis always wore tattered clothes, but one group of escaped slaves arrived barefoot. Accosted by Confederate soldiers on their way north, their shoes were stolen in the middle of the winter. Two other contraband women, fleeing from near Jefferson City, were caught in freezing conditions while trying to make their way to St. Louis. They were found by Union soldiers in time, but the 8-year-old girl with them did not make it. She died from frostbite.
Detroit Publishing, Library of Congress
Emancipation monument, Washington, D.C.
Others worked on behalf of the Union in enemy territory. Archer Alexander, who befriended Unitarian minister and founder of Washington University William Greenleaf Eliot, had escaped from a plantation in Missouri before he was able to pass on critical information to Union soldiers about sabotage to a bridge. Eliot would later hide Alexander in his home at great personal risk to himself. After the war, when a monument to Abraham Lincoln was commissioned, Alexander became the model for the slave being liberated by the president in Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C.
Lithography by E. Knodel, 1865, Missouri History Museum
An ordinance abolishing slavery in Missouri
Emancipation in Missouri came before the rest of the United States, on January 11, 1865. Less than a month later, on February 6, Missouri became the eighth state to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery throughout the whole country, which would come on December 18 of the same year. Now free, many African Americans would leave St. Louis, moving to Kansas or heading north. Their suffering, struggle to become free, and contribution to the war effort in the city, however, should not be forgotten.
