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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Coming up soon on the show, we're going

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Speaker 1: to talk about someone who ran a school at a

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Speaker 1: contraband camp during the US Civil War. We briefly explain

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Speaker 1: what these camps were during that upcoming episode, but we

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Speaker 1: also have a full episode on contraband camps, why they existed,

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Speaker 1: and why enslaved and previously enslaved people were referred to

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Speaker 1: as contraband during the war. So we're bringing that out

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Speaker 1: today as Today's Saturday Classic. And this episode originally came

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Speaker 1: out on July, so enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Missed

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Speaker 1: in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frying and I'm

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Speaker 1: Tracy Vie Wilson. And today we are talking about a

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Speaker 1: topic that was requested on Twitter by listener parsa uh

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Speaker 1: and it is contraband camps. And we have spoken before

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Speaker 1: about the term contraband being used to refer to escaped

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Speaker 1: or Union freed slaves during the U s Civil War,

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Speaker 1: but we really haven't touched on with any detail the

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Speaker 1: contraband camps where many of these people were held both

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Speaker 1: during the war and through reconstruction. And as is often

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Speaker 1: the case with history, the story of emancipation is just

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Speaker 1: way more complicated than the broad strokes that are often

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Speaker 1: used to describe it. It's definitely not as though the

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Speaker 1: Emancipation Proclamation happened and voila, everyone is free and everything

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Speaker 1: is great. In fact, this transition was incredibly difficult, and

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Speaker 1: newly freed people often really struggled and some very bad

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Speaker 1: things happened to them. And we're going to talk about

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Speaker 1: some of the legal issues surrounding slaves escaping to freedom,

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Speaker 1: and then we're going to get into the incident that

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Speaker 1: really catalyzed, sort of accidentally, the development of contraband camps,

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Speaker 1: and then we'll talk about the challenges that these camps posed,

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Speaker 1: both for those living in them and for the Union Army. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: both glad and sad that we're doing this episode because

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Speaker 1: it's such a difficult topic, but also the idea of

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Speaker 1: contraband has come up so many times in so many

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Speaker 1: past episodes that I'm really glad that we will have

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Speaker 1: this one to refer folks too. They want to learn

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Speaker 1: more about that. Yeah, So we've talked about the fugitive

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Speaker 1: Slave Acts before, but for the sake of context, we're

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Speaker 1: going to do kind of a broad stroke overview of them.

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Speaker 1: Here in the late seventeen hundreds, there was already a

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Speaker 1: significant conflict brewing between the states that we're pushing for

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Speaker 1: abolition and the slave states. There were concerns that this

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Speaker 1: ongoing disagreement was going to cause really big problems and

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Speaker 1: fracturing for the fledgling nations. So to try to find

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Speaker 1: a compromise, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of sevente

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Speaker 1: And this act built on the fugitive Slave clause that

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Speaker 1: already existed in the U. S Constitution. And that clause

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Speaker 1: read quote, no person held to service or labor in

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Speaker 1: one state under the laws thereof escaping into another, shall,

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Speaker 1: in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged

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Speaker 1: from such service or labor, but shall be delivered upon

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Speaker 1: claim of the party to whom such service or labor.

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Speaker 1: Maybe do so to sum that up, if you escape

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Speaker 1: to a free state, that doesn't mean that you're free.

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Speaker 1: So the Fugitive Slaved Act of established much more specific

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Speaker 1: ways for that clause to be enacted. It made provisions

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Speaker 1: for slave owners and those taking or are those acting

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Speaker 1: on their behalves to search for escaped slaves in free

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Speaker 1: states they had to provide proof of ownership if they

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Speaker 1: captured an escaped slave, but this requirement was actually pretty lax.

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Speaker 1: It could be as simple as as signed affidavit swearing

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Speaker 1: that yes, the captor owned the person they were holding.

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Speaker 1: This law also specified a penalty of five hundred dollars

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Speaker 1: to anyone who helped or hid an escape slave. In response,

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Speaker 1: several states enacted personal liberty laws to circumvent the Fugitive

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Speaker 1: Slave Act of seventeen ninety three and temper its abuse.

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Speaker 1: These laws were designed to protect free men who might

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Speaker 1: be captured and enslaved through exploitation of those kind of

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Speaker 1: slack proof requirements, and also to provide escaped slaves with

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Speaker 1: a right to a jury trial. But these laws were

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Speaker 1: eventually overturned in eighteen forty two when the Supreme Court

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Speaker 1: ruled in Prague versus Pennsylvania that state laws intended to

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Speaker 1: undermine the Slave Act could not trump federal law. Even so,

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Speaker 1: the Fugitive Slave Act of seventeen ninety three wasn't enforced

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Speaker 1: in a lot of areas, and slave states were really

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Speaker 1: angry at the number of people who were able who

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Speaker 1: were able to escape into free states. But we do

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Speaker 1: need to make a major note here. We've mentioned this before,

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Speaker 1: but it really bears repeating that. It's not as though

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Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of people were escaping from the slave states.

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Speaker 1: Escaping was incredibly difficult, and while you sometimes see numbers

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Speaker 1: in the thousands, you have to consider that when you

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Speaker 1: look at it in proportion, the number of people who

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Speaker 1: were escaping for bondage from bondage was a tiny, tiny

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Speaker 1: fraction of the actual total number of enslaved people. Due

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Speaker 1: to the growing discontent in slave states because of slaves

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Speaker 1: running to free states, in eighteen fifty, Congress once again

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Speaker 1: passed legislation in an effort to smooth things over and

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Speaker 1: prevent southern secession. This included a revision to the Fugitive

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Speaker 1: Slave Act. The eighteen fifty update to this act made

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Speaker 1: penalties much more serious for anyone aiding or hiding escaped slaves.

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Speaker 1: Instead of that five hundred dollar fine, it was a

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars and there was also a six month jail sentence.

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Speaker 1: Jury trials for slaves were also eliminated with this law,

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Speaker 1: and federal commissioners were given the power to oversee individual cases.

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Speaker 1: On May twenty three of eighteen sixty, one. So just

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Speaker 1: about six weeks after the US Civil War officially started

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Speaker 1: on April twelve, three escaped slaves managed to cross Virginia's

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Speaker 1: James River and make it to Fort Monroe. This is

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Speaker 1: a military post that was occupied by the Union. Those

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Speaker 1: three men, who were named Frank Baker, Shephard Malloy and

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Speaker 1: James Townsend, had been forced into Confederate service by their owner,

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Speaker 1: working for the hundred and fifteenth Virginia Militia. Their primary

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Speaker 1: job was building an artillery emplacement across from Fort Monroe

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Speaker 1: at Sewell's Point, But when word reached them that their owner,

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Speaker 1: Charles Mallory, intended to next send them to North Carolina,

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Speaker 1: a move that would take them farther away from their homes,

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Speaker 1: the three men decided that they were going to risk

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Speaker 1: and escape by water in the dark of night and

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Speaker 1: face the unknown reception they would get at the with

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Speaker 1: the Union forces. When the men were brought before Major

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Speaker 1: General Benjamin Franklin Butler, who was not an especially kind

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Speaker 1: or delightful person, he questioned them on a number of points,

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Speaker 1: ranging from the identity of their master, to the reason

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Speaker 1: why they had fled, to the work that they had

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Speaker 1: been doing for the Confederates. After the interview, Butler considered

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Speaker 1: the situation, and keep in mind that these men who

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Speaker 1: had run and we're looking for help, we're kind of

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Speaker 1: sent away from this interview with no indication as to

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Speaker 1: what was going to happen to them next. But as

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Speaker 1: Butler ruminated, UH, he considered the fact that by law,

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Speaker 1: slaves were supposed to be returned. But if he handed

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Speaker 1: these men back over to the enemy side, they would

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Speaker 1: be used to continue building the artillery emplacement that was

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Speaker 1: targeting his own fort. And they had also given him

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Speaker 1: some military intelligence in the course of their interview. So

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Speaker 1: while Butler was not himself an abolitionist, he wasn't particularly

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Speaker 1: keen on sending Baker, Shepard, and Mallory back to the rebels.

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Speaker 1: In the meantime, an officer from the rebel camp, Major

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Speaker 1: John baytop Carry, had arrived at the fort to collect

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Speaker 1: to these three escaped men, And in this critical moment,

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Speaker 1: General Butler tapped into his knowledge of law. He had

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Speaker 1: been a practicing attorney UH for years before he found

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Speaker 1: himself at Fort Monroe, Virginia, had succeeded less than a

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Speaker 1: day before the three fugitives were brought before him. So

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Speaker 1: when he met with Major Kerry, he stated quite clearly

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Speaker 1: that he was not going to turn over the three men,

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Speaker 1: and he told the Major quote, I am under no

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Speaker 1: constitutional obligations to a foreign country, which Virginia now claims

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Speaker 1: to be. I know, we already established that he's not

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Speaker 1: a particularly kind or delightful person, but when I was

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Speaker 1: reading this outline for the first time, I got to

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Speaker 1: that point and I was kind of like, yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: and he there is a there's more back and forth

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Speaker 1: between the two of them that you'll hear, and it

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Speaker 1: it is sort of a like, but you said we

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Speaker 1: couldn't be a foreign country. The Union isn't accepting our secession,

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Speaker 1: and he's like, but you're saying you're succeeding, and he

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Speaker 1: does sort of really turn on his law. Um, I

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Speaker 1: got lawyered. Yeah. So he was also operating under the

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Speaker 1: military law that a commander could seize property from his

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Speaker 1: enemy if that property was used with hostile intent, and

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Speaker 1: because the men had been building an artillery emplacement and

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Speaker 1: were considered property by the Confederacy, he felt that he

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Speaker 1: had full legal grounds to keep them. Yes, so while

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Speaker 1: he was maybe not an abolitionist, he was really, really

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Speaker 1: happy to kind of uh turn these confederates own words

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Speaker 1: against them and kind of you know, sticking in the

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Speaker 1: ribs with his law knowledge. Uh. And while Butler did

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Speaker 1: know that this decision was going to carry some import

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Speaker 1: in it, that it was going to add a layer

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Speaker 1: of complexity to the war, what he might not have

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Speaker 1: realized was just exactly what he was catalyzing and how

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Speaker 1: big it was going to become. Two days later, eight

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Speaker 1: more escaped slaves arrived at Fort Monroe, and on the

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Speaker 1: third day there were forty seven more. And that was

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Speaker 1: only the beginning. As words spread, more slave made their

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Speaker 1: way to the fort in the hopes of sanctuary, and

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Speaker 1: their ranks became more varied. At first it was just

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Speaker 1: young men, but soon it included women, children, and the elderly,

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Speaker 1: and Fort Monroe soon earned the nickname Freedom Fort. That

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Speaker 1: decision on the part of General Butler really set up

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Speaker 1: a situation that was kind of a conundrum for the government.

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Speaker 1: And we will talk about that after a pause for

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Speaker 1: a brief word from one of our wonderful sponsors, so

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Speaker 1: to get back to our story, asked for President Lincoln.

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Speaker 1: He was really not sure what to do about all

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Speaker 1: these fugitive slaves. He left the decision of how to

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Speaker 1: handle this growing number of refugees up to General Butler,

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Speaker 1: with the reminder that the military commander was at Fort

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Speaker 1: Monroe to fight the war, not to emancipate people. Some

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Speaker 1: bureaucratic suggestions were made by Cabinet Secretary Montgomery Blair, including

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Speaker 1: keeping the strong men to help at the war and

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Speaker 1: letting the rest go. And one newspaper this case drew

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Speaker 1: media attention almost from the moment that it began, suggested

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Speaker 1: keeping the slaves until the end of the war and

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Speaker 1: then selling them back to their former owners at a

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Speaker 1: rate that would reimburse the union for their care. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: everybody kind of had an opinion on what to do, uh,

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Speaker 1: And some of them were abhorrent, some of them were horrifying.

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Speaker 1: By early June, though, the numbers of escaped slaves at

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Speaker 1: Fort Monroe numbered more than five hundred, and the word

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Speaker 1: contrabands was being used almost universally in the press and

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Speaker 1: in the military at the time to refer to them.

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Speaker 1: And as we've talked about, we've we've mentioned that word

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Speaker 1: many times as a reference to escape slaves on the podcast.

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Speaker 1: But there was a New York Times magazine article from

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Speaker 1: twenty eleven that I came across written by Adam Goodheart,

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Speaker 1: and it beautifully explains why this word caught on so quickly,

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Speaker 1: and he says, quote, were these blacks people or property?

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Speaker 1: Free or slave? Such questions were as yet unanswerable, for

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Speaker 1: answering them would have raised a host of other questions

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Speaker 1: that few white Americans were ready to address, contrabands. Let

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Speaker 1: the speaker or writer off the hook by letting the

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Speaker 1: escape ees be all of those things at once. It

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Speaker 1: wasn't long before people were escaping and running to other

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Speaker 1: Union positions as well. And while some Union officers followed

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Speaker 1: Butler's lead, they didn't all do that. Particularly in the

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Speaker 1: border states. Enslaved people were often returned to their masters

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Speaker 1: by Union forces, but this didn't stop people from trying

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Speaker 1: to gain refuge at Union encampments. Finally, in an effort

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Speaker 1: to create some sort of consistency to how these things

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Speaker 1: were being handled, the Union issued the First Confiscation Act

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Speaker 1: on August six, eighteen sixty one, and this legislation declared

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Speaker 1: that the Union had the right to see slaves. That

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Speaker 1: was as part of a broader statement the Confederate property

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Speaker 1: of any kind could be taken by Union troops. It

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Speaker 1: also stated that slaveholders had no rights to ownership, but

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Speaker 1: the wording of this act was really problematic, and that

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Speaker 1: it did not make clear whether or not the slaves

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Speaker 1: themselves were then going to be free. The day after

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Speaker 1: the passing of the First Confiscation Act, which was August seven,

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Speaker 1: Confederate troops burned the town of Hampton, Virginia, which sat

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Speaker 1: across the water from Fort Monroe, after the white citizens

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Speaker 1: of the town evacuated. The Confederates didn't want Union troops

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Speaker 1: to seize Hampton for use as a winter quarters, for

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Speaker 1: one thing, but they were also really uneasy at the

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Speaker 1: growing numbers of of enslaved people who were making their

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Speaker 1: way to the area in search for freedom, and so

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Speaker 1: they sort of created a unique opportunity because in the

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Speaker 1: abandoned areas adjacent to this burned city, the community of

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Speaker 1: what became known as the Grand Contraband Camp formed. And

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Speaker 1: this started as a community that was bound by the

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Speaker 1: existing roads of the area, but as it ex banded

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Speaker 1: and refined its organizational structure, new streets were established, and

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Speaker 1: all of those were named for Union generals. But the

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Speaker 1: First Confiscation Act was only one of several pieces of

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Speaker 1: legislation created to organize a more unified plan for handling

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Speaker 1: escaped slaves. The Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves was

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Speaker 1: passed in March eighteen sixty two, and with this act,

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Speaker 1: Congress prevented the military from sending fugitive slaves back into slavery.

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Speaker 1: In July eighteen sixty two, Congress passed the Second Confiscation Act,

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Speaker 1: and this act further clarified the Union position that any

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Speaker 1: slaves who sought refuge in Union areas would be considered

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Speaker 1: captives of war and would be freed. This is something

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Speaker 1: of a prelude to the Emancipation Proclamation. While it clearly

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Speaker 1: stated that slaves would be freed, it only applied to

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Speaker 1: people escaping who made their way to Union occupied areas.

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Speaker 1: And through all of this congressional maneuver ring uh enslaved

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Speaker 1: people continued to seek asylum with Union forces, and eventually

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Speaker 1: makeshift camps were set up for them. In addition to

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Speaker 1: it wasn't just the Grand Contraband Camp. They were sort

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Speaker 1: of throwing together camps in a lot of different places,

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Speaker 1: and they all came to be known as contraband camps,

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Speaker 1: and as news of each of these laws spread, the

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Speaker 1: numbers in those camps swelled, and they swelled again with

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Speaker 1: the announcement of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September twenty,

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Speaker 1: eighteen sixty two, which stated that quote on the first

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Speaker 1: day of January, all persons held as slaves within any

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Speaker 1: state or designated part of a state, the people whereof

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Speaker 1: shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall

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Speaker 1: be then thenceforward and forever free. But it wasn't as

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Speaker 1: though any of the people that had already gone to

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Speaker 1: Union positions for help could then be told go away.

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Speaker 1: Until January one, this situation continued to grow, and it

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Speaker 1: needed organization and order. Along Themsissippi Valley, Ulysses S. Grant

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Speaker 1: named a superintendent of contrabands, and that was John Eaton,

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Speaker 1: who was the chaplain of the Seven Ohio Infantry. Initially,

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Speaker 1: Eaton organized the refugees into groups and gave those who

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Speaker 1: were capable of working work to do. The Union paid

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Speaker 1: twelve and a half cents for every picked pound of cotton.

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Speaker 1: Their clothing and board was deducted out of these earnings.

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Speaker 1: Other men were tapped for leadership positions and organizing contraband

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Speaker 1: camps throughout additional regions. For the most part, their work

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Speaker 1: followed a similar model. In addition to picking cotton, jobs

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Speaker 1: such as downing trees or cleary gland and construction projects

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Speaker 1: were also assigned to the refugees capable of and willing

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Speaker 1: to do labor. In a camp in Corinth, Mississippi, freedmen

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Speaker 1: were tasked with the work that transition the camp from

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Speaker 1: a makeshift tent set up to an actual small town

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Speaker 1: with something of an infrastructure. There were eventually cabins, streets, school,

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Speaker 1: a hospital, a church, and a commissary, and it was

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Speaker 1: all arranged into neighborhood wards and at its most populated,

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Speaker 1: the Corinth Camp was home to six thousand people. As

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Speaker 1: land was confiscated by the Union in areas around camps,

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Speaker 1: the task of farming that land also fell to the

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Speaker 1: camp residents. This enterprise was quite successful, eventually turning regular

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Speaker 1: profits and the proceeds of that went to the government.

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Speaker 1: But in the case of the Corinth Camp, as successful

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Speaker 1: as it was and in the research that I was doing,

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Speaker 1: it often gets referenced as like this example of like

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Speaker 1: a perfect execution of how to do this, but it

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Speaker 1: was still never considered a permanent solution. In the eighteen

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Speaker 1: sixty eight sixty four winter, all of the camp's residents

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Speaker 1: were moved to Memphis. The abandoned village was then just

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Speaker 1: left behind for Confederate forces to take over. So, while

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Speaker 1: we've been talking about Fort Monroe and Corinth, there were

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Speaker 1: also camps dotted throughout the occupied South. In North Carolina,

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Speaker 1: for example, there were more than seventeen thousand people living

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Speaker 1: in contraband camps by eighteen sixty four, and because overcrowding

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Speaker 1: became a very real problem in a lot of camps,

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Speaker 1: the military relocated some of these people to government farms.

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Speaker 1: And when black regiments were formed within the Union Army

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Speaker 1: in the second half of the Civil War, they recruited

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Speaker 1: from contraband camps, and in some cases men enlisted with

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Speaker 1: the understanding that in reciprocation, the Union Army was going

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Speaker 1: to take care of their families, though those agreements were

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Speaker 1: not always honored. And this brings us to another important

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Speaker 1: element of contraband camps, which is the incredibly poor treatment

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Speaker 1: that many of the people who lived there actually wound

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Speaker 1: up receiving. We'll talk about that in just a moment,

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Speaker 1: but first we will take a quick break for a

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Speaker 1: word from a sponsor. We've spoken pretty often on our

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Speaker 1: show about how racism and contradiction to how it's often

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Speaker 1: depicted is not just a Southern problem, and this was

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Speaker 1: certainly the case in regard to these contraband camps. Union

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Speaker 1: soldiers were often opposed to having camps filled with escaped

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Speaker 1: slaves adjacent to their own camps, even as many of

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Speaker 1: the people living there were working and contributing to the

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Speaker 1: war effort. And this of course was not an issue

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Speaker 1: exclusive to the military either. When black refugees made their

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Speaker 1: way out of Confederate territory into places such as Washington,

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Speaker 1: d c. They were not necessarily greeted with open arms.

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Speaker 1: White Northerners could be very vocal about their disdain for

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Speaker 1: the refugees, so in some cases the military actually intervened

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Speaker 1: to move these people into contraband camps. That meant that

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Speaker 1: people who had fought so hard to get to freedom

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Speaker 1: found themselves relocated to camps, sometimes back in Union occupied

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Speaker 1: areas of the very states that they had fled, and

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Speaker 1: often in very poor conditions. For one thing, many of

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Speaker 1: the services that were set up in camps were predicated

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Speaker 1: on the idea that the people living there were lazy

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Speaker 1: and shiftless and even untrustworthy. A lot of the education

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Speaker 1: was designed to teach escaped slaves how to be more

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Speaker 1: like white people, and it addressed people as though they

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Speaker 1: were simpletons. Additionally, the wages that were being paid for

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Speaker 1: the work that the refugees was doing was incredibly low.

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Speaker 1: But there was a much more pressing issue at many

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Speaker 1: of the camps. As numbers grew and the Union continued

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Speaker 1: to shuffle people around, it was hard for the basic

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Speaker 1: necessities of shelter, food, clothing, and medical care to be

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Speaker 1: met for many of the camp residents. In some camps,

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Speaker 1: people literally starved to death or became ill and died

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Speaker 1: simply because they couldn't get treatment. We know that the

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Speaker 1: military suffered incredible losses due to illness such as malaria

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Speaker 1: and smallpox during this time as well, so it makes

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00:20:50,480 --> 00:20:53,199
Speaker 1: sense that the same illnesses were hitting the camps that

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00:20:53,240 --> 00:20:58,040
Speaker 1: were growing right alongside the Union Army. Often, contraband camp

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00:20:58,080 --> 00:21:01,040
Speaker 1: residents who pleaded with military if shals for help were

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Speaker 1: seen as nuisances, even though they were simply trying to

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Speaker 1: secure basic survival needs for themselves and their families. The

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Speaker 1: Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January one of eighteen sixty three,

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Speaker 1: freeing all slaves in the rebelling States. And while this

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Speaker 1: was an important moment, as we mentioned at the beginning

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Speaker 1: of this episode, it's not as though suddenly everything was

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Speaker 1: super great for former slaves. Aside from the fact that

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Speaker 1: the war was still going on. Health issues remained a

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Speaker 1: significant and pressing problem. Yeah, and then that a lot

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00:21:33,680 --> 00:21:37,439
Speaker 1: of places that was not honored either. So between eighteen

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Speaker 1: sixty three and eighteen sixty six, sixty thou freed slaves

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Speaker 1: died of smallpox. An estimated total of one million of

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Speaker 1: the four million freed slaves became sick, and many of

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Speaker 1: them died from their illnesses, and that data was framed

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Speaker 1: for a really long time as being the result of

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Speaker 1: an inherent lack of hygiene among the newly freed. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: that false information was allowed to propagate for a great

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Speaker 1: length of time due to some incredibly bigoted attitudes, including

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Speaker 1: some people who felt that this high mortality rate somehow

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Speaker 1: proved that black people couldn't survive outside the construct of slavery,

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Speaker 1: and things were so bad that there was a popular

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Speaker 1: and super racist theory that the black race in the

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Speaker 1: US was going to go extinct because it simply couldn't

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Speaker 1: handle freedom. But in fact, the lack of resources and

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Speaker 1: a lack of treatment options led to out outright neglect

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Speaker 1: when it came to dealing with the illnesses that became

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Speaker 1: so common amongst freed people. Many of them were still

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Speaker 1: in contraband camps and their environments were overcrowded. The available

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Speaker 1: options for care available to white people dealing with the

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00:22:48,119 --> 00:22:51,960
Speaker 1: same illnesses were mostly closed off to black people, and

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Speaker 1: the military had really become stretched beyond its limits. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we spoke earlier of there being some infrastructure in the

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Speaker 1: lives of escaped slaves, but I'm going to backtrack on

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Speaker 1: that a little bit. Sort of. There was to some

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Speaker 1: degree a sort of community infrastructure to some of these camps,

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Speaker 1: in terms of well organized neighborhoods and social systems, but

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00:23:12,800 --> 00:23:15,720
Speaker 1: there was not at all an infrastructure that enabled the

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Speaker 1: government to provide for the scores of sick and injured

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Speaker 1: people in the military, let alone support the large numbers

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Speaker 1: of newly freed people who were going through this massive

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Speaker 1: sea change and needed assistance to get through that transition. Unfortunately,

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00:23:31,160 --> 00:23:34,480
Speaker 1: emancipation created a situation that the United States government was

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Speaker 1: just not prepared to deal with. There were serious challenges

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Speaker 1: to the freedmen who found themselves suddenly outside the structure

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Speaker 1: of their slavery bound lives. The shortages of food, clothing,

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Speaker 1: and shelter for newly emancipated people continued to be a

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Speaker 1: serious problem and a grave one. Survival was a struggle

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Speaker 1: in the best of circumstances. Even after emancipation, there were

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00:23:58,720 --> 00:24:02,560
Speaker 1: still people being moved into contraband camps. There just weren't

399
00:24:02,720 --> 00:24:06,720
Speaker 1: enough options or places for emancipated slaves to go. But

400
00:24:06,800 --> 00:24:10,119
Speaker 1: there were also freedmen who were diligent in avoiding the

401
00:24:10,160 --> 00:24:14,040
Speaker 1: camps as their reputations for their high mortality rates really

402
00:24:14,040 --> 00:24:17,800
Speaker 1: started to spread. So as a sort of stop gap,

403
00:24:18,119 --> 00:24:21,480
Speaker 1: an Act of Congress created the U. S. Bureau of Refugees,

404
00:24:21,560 --> 00:24:25,760
Speaker 1: Freedmen and Abandoned Lands were commonly known as the Freedmen's Bureau,

405
00:24:25,920 --> 00:24:28,720
Speaker 1: and they created it on March third of eighteen sixty five.

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Speaker 1: That was a little less than two months after the

407
00:24:32,160 --> 00:24:36,400
Speaker 1: thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution formally abolished slavery, and two

408
00:24:36,440 --> 00:24:41,000
Speaker 1: months before generally officially surrendered and ended the war. The

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00:24:41,119 --> 00:24:43,679
Speaker 1: Bureau was part of the war Department, and it was

410
00:24:43,720 --> 00:24:47,480
Speaker 1: intended to last until the war ended, plus one additional

411
00:24:47,560 --> 00:24:50,800
Speaker 1: year to provide the support and services to freed slave

412
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Speaker 1: that it had been so lacking up until that point.

413
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Speaker 1: But this was really not a magic fix. The country

414
00:24:56,760 --> 00:25:00,159
Speaker 1: had never had to create a welfare program before and

415
00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:03,360
Speaker 1: had never had to provide for a large number of refugees,

416
00:25:03,359 --> 00:25:05,240
Speaker 1: so there was a bit of guests work going on

417
00:25:05,359 --> 00:25:09,200
Speaker 1: in all of this, And of course there were plenty

418
00:25:09,240 --> 00:25:13,240
Speaker 1: of people completely opposed to the Freedman's Bureau even after

419
00:25:13,280 --> 00:25:16,040
Speaker 1: the war ended. Many southern states were against it, and

420
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Speaker 1: President Andrew Johnson, who you will recall took office after

421
00:25:20,320 --> 00:25:24,320
Speaker 1: Lincoln was shot, vetoed an extension of the bureau's life

422
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Speaker 1: and powers. In eighteen sixty six. Congress overrode that veto,

423
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Speaker 1: but internal debate still raged over how to structure aid

424
00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:35,800
Speaker 1: and assistance provided by the organization. The Freedman's Bureau did

425
00:25:35,880 --> 00:25:38,480
Speaker 1: do a lot of good work. It built hospitals and

426
00:25:38,520 --> 00:25:42,240
Speaker 1: provided medical aid. It helped former slaves with legal issues,

427
00:25:42,320 --> 00:25:45,800
Speaker 1: including establishing marriages in the legal record, which, as we've

428
00:25:45,840 --> 00:25:49,399
Speaker 1: mentioned in past episodes, didn't really exist before. That helped

429
00:25:49,440 --> 00:25:53,360
Speaker 1: family members find each other. You can actually find digitized

430
00:25:53,400 --> 00:25:56,200
Speaker 1: copies of Freedman's Bureau records of people trying to find

431
00:25:56,240 --> 00:25:59,520
Speaker 1: their family members who had been held elsewhere in bondage.

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Speaker 1: And it advocated for black workers and labor disputes disputes,

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00:26:03,520 --> 00:26:08,119
Speaker 1: and set up educational institutions. But as much as it

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00:26:08,440 --> 00:26:10,359
Speaker 1: was trying to do all these things as well as

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00:26:10,400 --> 00:26:13,480
Speaker 1: it could, it was woefully underfunded and there was never

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00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:16,840
Speaker 1: enough staff to meet its goals. The most agents as

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00:26:16,840 --> 00:26:19,280
Speaker 1: they were called, which were basically sort of akin to

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00:26:19,359 --> 00:26:22,840
Speaker 1: social workers that the Freedman's Bureau ever had at one

439
00:26:22,880 --> 00:26:26,040
Speaker 1: time was nine hundred, and that was nine hundred people

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00:26:26,119 --> 00:26:29,760
Speaker 1: to assist the approximately four million people who had been freed.

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00:26:30,480 --> 00:26:32,560
Speaker 1: Takes very little math knowledge to know that that is

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00:26:32,600 --> 00:26:37,120
Speaker 1: an overwhelming disparity of numbers, and those agents that were

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00:26:37,160 --> 00:26:39,720
Speaker 1: doing that work we're working during reconstruction, when there was

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00:26:39,760 --> 00:26:43,200
Speaker 1: still a lot of bitterness and roadblocking of their efforts.

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00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:47,200
Speaker 1: The Bureau was finally shut down in eighteen seventy two.

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Speaker 1: After the war ended, many of the contraband camps that

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00:26:51,000 --> 00:26:55,720
Speaker 1: weren't dismantled slowly transitioned into basically a black neighborhood, even

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00:26:55,760 --> 00:27:00,520
Speaker 1: as white residents moved into the area. The Grand Entreband

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00:27:00,560 --> 00:27:03,119
Speaker 1: Camp in Hampton, Virginia that we talked about earlier was

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00:27:03,160 --> 00:27:05,840
Speaker 1: one of those, and it turned out that the person

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00:27:05,920 --> 00:27:09,119
Speaker 1: who had owned the land where the camp began, Jefferson

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00:27:09,160 --> 00:27:12,800
Speaker 1: Bonaparte Sinclair, went bankrupt and this opened the door for

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00:27:12,880 --> 00:27:14,639
Speaker 1: some of the people who had settled there in the

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00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:17,920
Speaker 1: camp to purchase their homes after the court divided the

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00:27:18,000 --> 00:27:21,119
Speaker 1: land into parcels. These are some of the first instances

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00:27:21,200 --> 00:27:24,920
Speaker 1: of freed people buying property on record, and the Hampton

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00:27:25,000 --> 00:27:28,040
Speaker 1: Camp continues to be a place of interest. Beginning in

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00:27:29,000 --> 00:27:33,120
Speaker 1: archaeological investigation of the site of the Grand Contraband Camp started.

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00:27:33,520 --> 00:27:36,520
Speaker 1: The site had been built over, but the apartment building

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00:27:36,520 --> 00:27:39,000
Speaker 1: that had been standing on the main site was demolished

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00:27:39,040 --> 00:27:42,240
Speaker 1: and the James River Institute of Archaeology started excavating the

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00:27:42,280 --> 00:27:44,199
Speaker 1: area to try to learn more about the lives of

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00:27:44,240 --> 00:27:46,840
Speaker 1: the people who had lived in the camp. Yeah, there's

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00:27:46,880 --> 00:27:50,400
Speaker 1: an excellent article in Archaeology Magazine online where they talk

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00:27:50,480 --> 00:27:52,359
Speaker 1: about some of their early findings, and that will be

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00:27:52,359 --> 00:27:55,640
Speaker 1: in our show notes. But the legacy of health discrimination,

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00:27:55,760 --> 00:27:59,360
Speaker 1: which has has its roots during this tumultuous and pivotal

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00:27:59,359 --> 00:28:03,040
Speaker 1: time in US history continues to be discussed by historians

469
00:28:03,080 --> 00:28:06,680
Speaker 1: and social workers alike. UH. If you're interested in exploring

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00:28:06,720 --> 00:28:09,320
Speaker 1: that issue in far more depth, I highly recommend the

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00:28:09,359 --> 00:28:12,480
Speaker 1: book Sick from Freedom by Jim Downs. It is not

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00:28:12,560 --> 00:28:14,360
Speaker 1: an easy read. There are a lot of very difficult

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00:28:14,400 --> 00:28:19,000
Speaker 1: stories to discover in that book, but it's really eye opening.

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00:28:19,359 --> 00:28:21,679
Speaker 1: It's an incredible exploration of the suffering that went on

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00:28:21,720 --> 00:28:24,439
Speaker 1: in many contraband camps, and it's important for people to

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00:28:24,520 --> 00:28:27,040
Speaker 1: know this stuff was happening, So I highly recommend it.

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00:28:27,280 --> 00:28:29,200
Speaker 1: There's also, again it will be in our show notes,

478
00:28:29,240 --> 00:28:31,280
Speaker 1: an excellent lecture that he gave at the U. S

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00:28:31,359 --> 00:28:34,680
Speaker 1: National Archives a couple of years ago, where he talks

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00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:37,440
Speaker 1: about both some of these issues. It's only an hour

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00:28:37,520 --> 00:28:39,880
Speaker 1: long lecture, so he doesn't go into all of the details,

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00:28:39,880 --> 00:28:41,760
Speaker 1: but he talks not only about some of these issues,

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00:28:41,800 --> 00:28:47,240
Speaker 1: but the way that information has been bent and reframed

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00:28:47,400 --> 00:28:51,680
Speaker 1: and perceived by various special interesting groups along the way,

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00:28:51,920 --> 00:28:55,240
Speaker 1: and some people using this sort of information for their

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00:28:55,240 --> 00:28:59,520
Speaker 1: own ends that is gross and racist, UH, as well

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00:28:59,560 --> 00:29:03,280
Speaker 1: as people not always wanting to acknowledge how bad some

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00:29:03,360 --> 00:29:05,760
Speaker 1: of this went, because it makes it seem like emancipation

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00:29:05,800 --> 00:29:08,360
Speaker 1: was a bad thing, which it obviously was not, but

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00:29:08,440 --> 00:29:11,720
Speaker 1: it was a challenging thing. So uh, that's the scoop

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Speaker 1: on contraband camps. Thank you so much Carsa for suggesting it.

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Speaker 1: It had kind of been lurking for a while on

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Speaker 1: my list and I think on Tracy's list as well. Uh,

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00:29:21,560 --> 00:29:23,560
Speaker 1: and it just seemed like time to tackle it finally,

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00:29:23,680 --> 00:29:32,080
Speaker 1: So pay so much for joining us on this Saturday.

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00:29:32,320 --> 00:29:34,400
Speaker 1: Since this episode is out of the archive, if you

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00:29:34,480 --> 00:29:36,520
Speaker 1: heard an email address or a Facebook U r L

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00:29:36,600 --> 00:29:38,920
Speaker 1: or something similar over the course of the show, that

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00:29:39,120 --> 00:29:43,120
Speaker 1: could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History

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00:29:43,240 --> 00:29:47,360
Speaker 1: Podcast at i heart radio dot com. Our old health

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00:29:47,360 --> 00:29:50,560
Speaker 1: stuff works email address no longer works, and you can

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00:29:50,600 --> 00:29:53,760
Speaker 1: find us all over social media at missed in History

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00:29:53,960 --> 00:29:56,960
Speaker 1: and you can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 1: Google podcast, the I heart Radio app, and wherever else

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00:30:00,280 --> 00:30:06,280
Speaker 1: you listen to podcasts. Stuff You Missed in History Class

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00:30:06,320 --> 00:30:09,400
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts

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00:30:09,400 --> 00:30:11,800
Speaker 1: from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,

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00:30:11,880 --> 00:30:15,080
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Speaker 1: H