I was unaware of this until I read about it in an essay by by Christopher Barr in Crossing the Deadlines. Here are the facts as Barr gives them:
In early March 1862, Confederate prisoners of war passed through the gates of Camp Chase in Columbus, Ohio. Most of these thousand enlisted men and three hundred officers were captured at Fort Donelson. But scattered amongst these soldiers in shades of gray and butternut were several dozen Confederates unlike anything the Union army was prepared to handle—enslaved men.2 These men had accompanied their masters off to war and served as personal servants, cooks, and wagon drivers. When the Confederates surrendered at Fort Donelson, these men found themselves alongside their masters in trains headed north. Their presence in Camp Chase created a legal conundrum on the status of captives, and prompted a series of policy changes that paved the way for thousands of men later to be held in long-term captivity….
…Col. Granville Moody, still new to the position, decided to allow the Confederate soldiers to keep their servants with them in captivity, inadvertently turning the camp into a six-acre enclave in Ohio where slavery was legal, protected by the government, and enforced by the U.S. Army. In practice, Moody and his subordinates conferred the legal status of prisoners of war to these black captives. In April 1862, the Office of the Inspector General reported that around one hundred black prisoners were held captive in Camp Chase and that they received the same rations, medical care, and access to shelter as their white counterparts. They were, the report said, “considered as prisoners of war.”
From: Crossing the Deadlines: Civil War Prisons Reconsidered . The Kent State University Press. Kindle Edition. Kindle Locations 3040-3112
Follow Reconstruction Blog on Social Media:
