l incoln’s s hadow 37
against any move to use secession as an excuse to free the slaves. By late
spring 1862, emancipation of slaves was clearly on the agenda, though
many Democrats adamantly resisted. Lincoln faced the real possibility
that his endorsement of emancipation could split the North.
Several factors drove the president to reconsider a limited war. First,
whatever Lincoln and political and military leaders in the North may
have thought about keeping the question of slavery out of the war, the
slaves themselves would have it otherwise. At all points of contact
between Union forces and the South, slaves sought the freedom they
believed the northern soldiers would bestow. As runaway slaves started
to make their way to Union lines, local commanders faced the delicate
task of deciding what to do with them. General Benjamin Butler, at
Fort Monroe in tidewater Virginia, declared the slaves who came across
the lines to be “contraband of war” and insisted that they not be
returned to their owners. Th e term “contraband” soon came into wide
use to describe all slaves who fl ed to Union control. Against Demo-
cratic and border state opposition, Congress ratifi ed Butler’s ad hoc
approach as official policy by passing the 1861 Confiscation Act.
Another senior officer, Major General John C. Frémont, placed in
command of Missouri early in the war, decided to pressure the rebel
sympathizers in that critical border state by declaring that their property
would be confi scated and their slaves freed. After Lincoln ordered the
general to soften his policy, the president drew both praise and intense
criticism, an indication of how fragile the consensus was in support of
a war that did not confront slavery.
Second, it became increasingly evident during the fi rst year of the
war that slaves were a vital economic and, indirectly, military resource
to the South. Slave labor sustained the southern economy, replacing
white men who had gone off to the Confederate armies. Without the
contributions from its African American subject population, the South
would have been hard-pressed to feed itself, grow cotton to trade abroad
for essential goods, or produce munitions for its troops. More directly,
slave labor was put to use in constructing fortifi cations and repairing
the transportation infrastructure upon which the Confederacy relied to
move its armies. Union offi cers and their men recognized the vital role
of the slaves in the southern war eff ort and started to wonder whether
a hands-off approach toward the “peculiar institution” was self-defeating.