Enslaved People Flood Union Lines as "Contraband"

When three enslaved men, Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory, and James Townsend, rowed to Fort Monroe, Virginia, and General Benjamin Butler refused to return them, it began a mass movement. By war's end, roughly 500,000 enslaved people had escaped to Union lines. Living in dangerous, disease-ridden "contraband camps" with inadequate food and shelter, they nonetheless chose precarious freedom over bondage, fundamentally reshaping Union war strategy.