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Grand Contraband Camp was located in Elizabeth City County on the Virginia Peninsula near Fort Monroe during and immediately after the American Civil War. The area was a refuge for escaped slaves who the Union forces refused to return to their former Confederate masters, by defining them as "Contraband of War". The Grand Contraband Camp was the first self-contained black community in the United States and occupied the area of the downtown section of the present-day independent city of Hampton, Virginia. == Confederate slaves in Union hands: legal status == When Virginia seceded from the United States in 1861, the US Army retained control of Fort Monroe at the eastern tip of the Virginia Peninsula. During much of the American Civil War, the commander at Fort Monroe was Brigadier General Benjamin Butler, a lawyer by profession and an opponent of slavery. When slaves began escaping to Union lines at the fort, General Butler took the position that, since the Confederate states considered slaves to be chattel ("property"), and that certain individuals were property obtained by the Union through war, his refusal to return escaped slaves to masters supporting the Confederacy amounted to classifying them as "Contraband of war". The term "contraband" in referring escaped slaves first enters the Official Records in U.S. Navy correspondence on August 10, 1861 when Acting Master William Budd of the gunboat USS ''Resolute'' uses the term (Official records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I - Volume 4: page 604). Three slaves, Frank Baker, James Townsend and Sheppard Mallory had been contracted by their owners to the Confederate Army under General Benjamin Huger to help construct defense batteries at Sewell's Point across the mouth of Hampton Roads from Union-held Fort Monroe. They escaped at night and rowed a skiff to Old Point Comfort, where they sought asylum at Fort Monroe. Prior to the War, slave owners could legally request their return (as property) under the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. But, Virginia had seceded. General Butler, who was educated as an attorney, took the position that, if Virginia considered itself a foreign power to the U.S., he was under no obligation to return the three men. He determined to hold them as "contraband of war." When Confederate Major John B. Cary requested their return, Butler denied it. The three men worked for the Union Army but were given minimal pay. The US Confiscation Act of 1861 clarified the issue of slaves' status during the war; it declared that Union forces could seize any property used by the Confederate military, including slaves. Many, including slaves, saw this as a means of unofficially freeing the slaves from Southerners' control, and they began to go to Union lines. Their journey to freedom was fraught with difficulties. A contemporary account from the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission:〔Owen, Robert Dale, James McKaye, and Samuel G. Howe. ''Preliminary Report Touching the Condition and Management of Emancipated Refugees; Made to the Secretary of War, by the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission'', June 30, 1863. New York, NY: John F. Trow, 1863, p. 19.〕 Besides the risk of re-enslavement from confederate patrols, Union pickets were apt to loot refugees in a difficult situation. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Grand Contraband Camp, Virginia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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