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Primary source: Union General Benjamin Butler to Union General Winfield Scott, letter, 1861.
Caption: Two Union generals discuss emancipation.
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Since I wrote my last dispatch the question in regard to slave property is becoming one of very serious magnitude. The inhabitants of Virginia are using their Negroes in the batteries, and are preparing to send the women and children South. The escapes from them are very numerous, and a squad has come in this morning to my pickets bringing their women and children. . . . I am in the utmost doubt what to do with this species of property. Up to this time I have had come within my lines men and women with their children—entire families—each family belonging to the same owner. I have therefore determined to employ, as I can do very profitably, the able–bodied persons in the party, issuing proper food for the support of all, and charging against their services the expense of care and sustenance of the non-laborers. . . . I know of no other manner in which to dispose of this subject and the questions connected herewith. As a matter property to the insurgents it will be of very great moment, the number that I now have amounting as I am informed to what in good times would be the value of sixty–thousand dollars. . . . Without [the labor of these fugitives] the batteries could not have been erected at least for many weeks. As a military question it would seem to be a measure of necessity to deprive their masters of their services. How can this be done? As a political question and a question of humanity can I receive the services of a Father and a Mother and not take the children? Of the humanitarian aspect I have no doubt. Of the political one I have no right to judge. I therefore submit all this to your better judgement, and as these questions have a political aspect, I have ventured—and I trust I am not wrong in so doing—to duplicate the parts of my dispatch relating to this subject and forward them to the Secretary of War.
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Union General Benjamin Butler to Union General Winfield Scott, Fortress Monroe, Virginia, (27 May 1861), Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867 ed. Steven Hahn et al. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Reprint, Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, et al., eds., Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War (New York: The New Press, 1992), 9–10.
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