In her book Troubled Refuge: Struggling for Freedom in the Civil War, Chandra Manning stresses the tenuous nature of emancipation. During the Civil War, an estimated 500,000 women, men, and children escaped from slavery and headed toward Union-occupied areas. But they could not know what awaited them around the next corner--freedom or recapture. Once they arrived someplace--reunion with loved ones or disappointment; disease or health; not to mention, where to live, how to eke out an existence, and other life-or-death decision. In Virginia, along the Mississippi River, in South Carolina, and elsewhere, they had no idea about what would come next. 

A Basket of Eggs

During a talk at the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office, Manning said her initial assumption in writing her book was she could discover a "framework" in which to set the experiences of the refugees. She could not.  One of the many individual accounts she found centered on a woman in North Carolina who put her children and a basket of eggs in a canoe, which she navigated into Union-held territory. As she said, you can't get more fragile than a basket of eggs. Ferrying small children to an uncertain fate may be a close second.

In May 1861 at Fort Monroe (Union-held despite its location in Virginia), three enslaved men requested protection from their master. This request launched a movement. The camp's commander, Gen. Benjamin Butler, drew on the argument of the slaveholders--since these men were considered property, he did not have to return them to slavery since they were "contraband property." From there, the idea--and the term--spread. Dozens more people came into Fort Monroe within a week or so; the numbers grew exponentially over the next few months.

Thousands more came into Union camps. Many moved to the cities they could reach, with Washington and Alexandria prime targets. On South Carolina's Sea Islands, the African American population remained when whites left, thus transforming the area into a contraband-like refugee settlement. 

Everywhere, they ran high risk of capture en route to freedom. Shelter, clothing, and medical care barely sufficed. Moreover, especially away from the East Coast, Union troops were on the move. For example, conditions in a camp in Corinth, Mississippi, were relatively good. But when the Union troops mobilized elsewhere, the freedpeople had to leave, too. 

Relief associations provided some aid, but the institutional apparatus of today, however insufficient, did not exist. No UNHCR. No Red Cross. The Union Army had infrastructure but no experience or desire to provide widespread, institutionalized relief.

Yet, the Army also needed the refugees. They provided much needed labor in hospitals, on railroads, and in the camps themselves. They shared knowledge of the terrain, essential to troop movements. According to Manning, these efforts created a new sense of citizenship for the nation, not just related to property ownership.

Steps to Freedom in Alexandria

Many freedpeople who came into Alexandria, as elsewhere, did so almost in a split-second decision. They seized the opportunity, rather than plan and pack beforehand.

As I listened to Manning, I remembered something Julia Wilbur had recorded in her diary on November 6, 1862, the day after she came to Alexandria:

"I went home with a woman. In one of the worst old tenements I ever saw. I went up stairs wh. were dangerous to mount, in a room lighted only by vents & cracks, were 3 women & 13 children, one very sick, being badly burnt. In another room was a woman & 7 children, some of the mothers were away to work. One said “When Master heard the Unions was coming, he tried to get away all the children & women. Twas in the night while he was putting them into wagons. She took her 3 children & run, without waiting for clothes. One child in her arms was nearly naked. She walked 6 mi. that night in the woods, dragging the other 2 little ones along. Her Master was [Jeremiah Morton], Congressman at W.... He said before he wd. let one of his niggers be free he wd. put them into a barn & burn them all up. He told them if they went to the Yankees they wd. starve in 3 days, & they wd. sell them to Hayti.— One woman said she did not wait for a bonnet or anything; she brought away 6 children, 3 of her own & 3 of her sisters who was dead...."

Echoes Today

As Manning pointed out, it's hard not to talk about refugees without considering our situation today. While institutions do now exist to support refugees, it is clear they do not have the resources or political support to accomplish their monumental task. 

Now, as then, refugees take risks with absolutely no assurance of a better life--much less survival, as the cases of those on small boats leaving Libya and Turkey show, among other examples.