Escape to Freedom

Early in the Civil War, on 23 May 1861, three enslaved men, Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory, and James Townsend, arrived at Fort Monroe seeking freedom. A Virginia officer demanded their return, citing the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Union Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler refused, noting that the men had been constructing fortifications for Virginia forces, which he said rendered them contraband of war subject to confiscation. The federal government later codified this policy in the First Confiscation Act. Many other enslaved people soon fled to Fort Monroe and to Federal lines elsewhere in the South, weakening the Confederacy and setting the United States on a path toward emancipation.