When a “Slave Owner” Sought the Help of the Union Army in Re-Enslaving Black People

One experience that many Union soldiers had for the first time in their lives when they were marching through the Confederacy was was encountering enslaved Blacks seeking liberation from slavery. Even more surprising to the Federal men was then being approached by slave-owners seeking their slaves back and expecting the assistance of the United States Army in getting them.

In 1863, not long before Gettysburg, Union Brigadier General George Gordon was operating east of Richmond, Virginia at West Point. His men found that wherever they went, Black men, women, and children sought them out in the hope that they would be freed. This self-emancipation was often followed by slave owners making petitions to Gordon to return the escapees “for their own good.” By the third year of the war, Union soldiers knew that returned slaves, who were often described as “family” by their petitioning owners, were typically tortured following their return. In Gordon’s War Diary he wrote of escapees and of their “masters”:

And still they came and “‘joiced,” though they left mourners in the old home who would not be comforted. There was no help for it, and slave-masters began to en dure the humiliation of begging for the return of their slaves. On the 26th of May, I received a first appeal: it came by letter from a Mr. G of King William County, and was addressed to me as the General commanding the post at West Point, ” through the request of the old lady, the bearer,” and appealed to me “for the sake of humanity to grant her request.”

The writer then went on to say: ” On the night of the nineteenth instant, five of my servants left me for West Point without any cause whatever. Amos, a man whom I have been hiring for several years for the purpose of his being with his family ; when he left he carried with him two of his children, a boy by the name of Amos, sometimes called Dee, and a girl named Milly, — both of which I raised and am exceedingly attached to them, and my wife is equally as much, or more so. Therefore, sir, I most respectfully request you to return them to me, and also in behalf of their distressed mother do I also make the request. She is left by her husband Amos with four other small children. Another woman left me, by the name of Henny, and left two small children, one an infant at the breast, and it would make your heart bleed to see how the little child misses its mother; it is crying night and day, as its grandmother will tell you. Her business is to see you and ask you to return her child to her. The name of the other woman is Hannah ; she left no child. Now, sir, I hope you will not think that I am asking the return of the above servants for the sake of profit. Indeed it is not so, the reasons are these: first, my attachment for them, — they are a part of my family ; and secondly my deplorable situation, which I will state. You will observe that I have six small children left, and have four small ones of my own, making ten in all; and I have only one servant left to aid me in supporting them. To be sure I have another, but he is, I may say, an invalid, having an afflicted leg and hand, and I am an infirm man, and am at a loss to know how I am to make a support for them. These are the reasons, which I am sure you will conclude are good ones.”

To this sorrowful appeal I replied that I had received at one of my outposts this morning his letter of the twenty-sixth, asking for the return of five of his servants who left him on the night of the nineteenth instant, and, as he alleged, without any cause whatever; among them a man, Amos, whom he had been hiring for several years for the purpose of keeping him with his family, and two of his children, a boy and girl, both of whom he raised. My letter then continued as follows: —

“In desiring their return, you give as your reasons that you and your wife, having raised them, are exceedingly attached to them ; also that their distressed mother has been left by her hus band, Amos, with four other small children. And you further state that another woman, named Henny, fled from your service, leaving two small children, — one an infant at the breast, whose distressing cries for its mother, you allege, would make my heart bleed. And there is still another fugitive, Hannah. You further allege that you do not ask the return of these servants for profit, but because, first, you are exceedingly attached to them, they being part of your family ; and, second, your deplorable sit uation, having the six colored children left, and four small ones of your own, making ten in all. And still further, that you have but one servant left — except an afflicted one who is not of much service — to aid you in supporting them. For these reasons, which you conclude I shall think good ones, you wish me to return the colored people that have sought refuge here.”

“Your servants, by escaping within my lines, are forever free. I have no right, even had I the inclination, to remand them again to a condition of slavery. This, though conclusive as to the course to be pursued, does not meet the reasons you give why they should be returned ; therefore I give a moment’s attention to these. Your own and your wife’s attachment to your servants, you offer as a reason why I should return them. But, sir, this attachment does not seem to be mutual. Your servants have fled from your fond care; your affection is unrequited ; and your solace will certainly be found in the fact that the poor negro has not only an aversion to remaining with your family, but that, in the case of mother and children, it was strong enough to tear a mother’s love from her nursing babe. Upon what principle of humanity should I take part in continuing a relation of such aversion to the free colored people that were your slaves?”

“Again. Your distressed situation you offer as a reason why I should return these free colored people to you. Sympathizing with you in your distress as every human being should, you will be consoled by the knowledge thus brought home to you that the accursed institution of slavery is almost swept from your hearthstone j that the day is dawning when neither mother nor child will have to outrage Nature’s laws to breathe the air of liberty; and it will gladden your heart to know that wherever our star-spangled banner waves, freedom follows. While pray ing for pardon for the sins of your people in causing this atro cious rebellion against a just Government, you will yet have the proud consciousness of knowing that you have been an agent in freeing the oppressed in our land; and thus it may happen that that sin, which is as scarlet, may be washed whiter than snow.”

To have heeded this appeal, and delivered the fugitives, would have been to deny the privileges I had offered, and to doom the hopeless slave to a harder fate than before. It was not to be thought of for a moment that I should be blinded by this pretence of humanity to the real claim for property which underlay these maudlin demonstrations. Dee, a bright little fellow, found a home with Captain Washburn, of the Fourth Cavalry, as his servant; and so well contented was he, that when I told him how desolate he had made his master’s home, and how deep was the affection his master had expressed for him, the unfeeling little rascal had no regret for his conduct, no desire to return.

Source: Gordon, George H.. A WAR DIARY OF EVENTS IN THE WAR OF THE GREAT REBELLION, 1863-1865 [ILLUSTRATED EDITION] (1882) . Boston : J.R. Osgood and Co. Kindle Edition pp. 67-70

Note: The illustration is a painting by Eastman Johnson titled A Ride for Liberty: The Fugitive Slaves (1863). It can be seen in the Brooklyn Museum. 

 

 

 

 

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