NY Times ^ | 04/01/2011 | Adam Goodheart
Posted on Saturday, April 02, 2011 3:04:41 AM by iowamark
...Baker, Mallory and Townsend were field hands who — like hundreds of other local slaves — had been pressed into service by the Confederates, compelled to build an artillery emplacement. They labored beneath the banner of the 115th Virginia Militia, a blue flag bearing a motto in golden letters: "Give me liberty or give me death."
After a week or so of this, they learned some deeply unsettling news. Their master, a rebel colonel named Charles Mallory, was planning to send them even farther from home, to help build fortifications in North Carolina. That was when the three slaves decided to leave the Confederacy and try their luck, just across the water, with the Union...
..."I intend to hold them," Butler said.
"Do you mean, then, to set aside your constitutional obligation to return them?"
Even the dour Butler must have found it hard to suppress a smile. This was, of course, a question he had expected. And he had prepared what he thought was a fairly clever answer.
"I mean to take Virginia at her word," he said. "I am under no constitutional obligations to a foreign country, which Virginia now claims to be."
"But you say we cannot secede," Cary retorted, "and so you cannot consistently detain the Negroes."
"But you say you have seceded," Butler said, "so you cannot consistently claim them. I shall hold these Negroes as contraband of war, since they are engaged in the construction of your battery and are claimed as your property."
Ever the diligent litigator, Butler had been reading up on his military law. In time of war, he knew, a commander had a right to seize any enemy property that was being used for hostile purposes. The three fugitive slaves, before their escape, were helping build a Confederate gun emplacement...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
--
**********
As in most cases, the Reader Responses are at least as goodas the article itself...
ReplyDelete