As much as slavery was a divisive feature of the pre-Civil War United States, how to end it and what to do with the freed black people divided the nation even more. Among the South, the ending of slavery meant an end to their way of life which was obviously something to be avoided. However there was little agreement among Northerners either in the matter. At the beginning, perhaps Lincoln sought to avoid having to deal with issue all together, but a pair of blinders on and just concentrated on military matters. But General Benjamin Butler (a general of questionable military ability, but one good with logistics and politics), unlike Lincoln, found himself forced to deal with the matter of runaway slaves who were escaping from their masters and fleeing to the Union lines. No fan of slavery himself, he was loath however, to step on any political toes (such as General Fremont did a few months after this letter was written) and thus directed a letter to the Secretary of War Simon Cameron, asking for orders.
First. What shall be done with them? and, Second. What is their state and condition? Upon these questions I desire the instructions of the department.
The first question, however, may perhaps be answered by considering the last. Are these men, women, and children slaves? Are they free? Is their condition that of men, women, and children, or of property, or is it a mixed relation? What their status was under the constitution and laws, we all know. What has been the effect of a rebellion and a state of war upon that status? When I adopted the theory of treating the able-bodied negro fit to work in the trenches as property liable to be used in aid of rebellion, and so contraband of war, that condition of things was in so far met, as I then and still believe, on a legal and constitutional basis.
Butler has recognized that his actions in refusing to surrender escaped slaves back to their masters and his thus utilizing them to aid in the Union's military struggle was an act of military necessity and though it was nominally supported by the federal government, it was a stop-gap measure at best.
But now a new series of questions arise. Passing by women, the children, certainly, cannot be treated on that basis; if property, they must be considered the incumbrance rather than the auxiliary of an army, and, of course, in no possible legal relation could be treated as contraband. Are they property? If they were so, they have been left by their masters and owners, deserted, thrown away, abandoned, like the wrecked vessel upon the ocean. Their former possessors and owners have causelessly, traitorously, rebelliously, and, to carry out the figure, practically abandoned them to be swallowed up by the winter storm of starvation.
The regulations under which Butler had previously seized runaway slaves and used them as labors, he states cannot now be applied to all of the 900 Negros who have fled to his lines. For these numbers include women, children and older people, all of whom could not be expected to the kind of labor that Butler had initially claimed the runaways for. What Butler is clearing asking for is an official ruling by the federal government, something with legs to stand on in order to JUSTIFY his keeping runaway slaves, this time ones not of any great use to the army, from their masters.
But we, their salvors, do not need and will not hold such property, and will assume no such ownership: has not, therefore, all proprietary relation ceased? Have they not become, thereupon, men, women, and children? No longer under ownership of any kind, the fearful relicts of fugitive masters, have they not by their master's acts, and the state of war, assumed the condition, which we hold to be the normal one, of those made in God's image? Is not every constitutional, legal, and normal requirement, as well to the runaway master as their relinquished slaves, thus answered? I confess that my own mind is compelled by this reasoning to look upon them as men and women. If not free born, yet free, manumitted, sent forth from the hand that held them, never to be reclaimed.
I have no personal knowledge of Butler's thoughts on slavery and black people in general. He may have first refused to return runaway slaves to their masters out of a need to both use their labor to help the army and to hurt their masters. However, this last section certainly seem to me to be the words of an abolitionist. With: "Have they not become, thereupon, men, women, and children? No longer under ownership of any kind" he gives the runaways a status as "human beings", NOT as "property". He further goes on to say that by making the runaways free men and women, all requirements of a society: "constitutional, legal, and normal" are fulfilled. For the Constitution supported keeping them away from their masters under articles of war pertaining to "contraband". In legal matters, if a person is living on free soil (as territory under Union military control could be considered) then slavery is not allowed. As for "normal requirements" what could be more "normal" then a desire to be free from bondage? And with many of the runaway slaves already working in a multitude of capacities for the Union army and earning wages, or simply food and a place to stay, who could not argue that they were doing the work of "free men" not slaves?
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