A closer look

"Contrabands": Caught between Slavery and Freedom

How were African Americans who fled enslavement during the Civil War depicted in popular visual media?

by Josh Brown, The Graduate Center, CUNY (Emeritus)

Note: This resource includes offensive racial stereotypes that were common in nineteenth-century cartoons and other commercial visual media.

Historical Context

After May 1861, with the startling news about enslaved African Americans fleeing to the Union-held Fortress Monroe in Hampton Roads, Virginia, a new dimension was added to the visual reporting of the war. The northern public viewed illustrations in pictorial newspapers and prints that showed enslaved African Americans seeking the protection of the Union Army. And photographs were widely disseminated of newly arrived African Americans in federal army encampments—such as this group of men, women, and children in eastern Virginia on May 14, 1862.

First called “contrabands of war” by the Union Army to justify their confiscation when enslavers demanded their return, the freedom seekers soon were generally referred to as “contrabands.” The figure of the contraband quickly gained traction in popular culture as textual, theatrical, musical, and visual shorthand for African Americans fleeing slavery.

Photographs of Servility

But contraband was an offensive term because it implicitly still categorized formerly enslaved African Americans as property, comparable to a bale of cotton or a work animal. Caught somewhere between slavery and freedom, “contrabands” also were viewed by many northerners as a new burden for the Union—despite their work as teamsters, cooks, and laborers in Union camps. That attitude was conveyed in many photographs of northern encampments, such as this November 1862 Virginia scene, that showed former enslave men in subordinate positions as servants beside white soldiers.

Cartoons Using Cruel Humor

But the view of “contrabands” as dependent was most starkly captured in numerous political cartoons in the pictorial press and humor magazines. As one example, while Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper presented its readers with compelling illustrations of the formerly enslaved reaching Union lines, it also offered “comical” suggestions for how they might be utilized to further the war effort. In this October 1861 cartoon entitled “Dark Artillery; or How to Make the Contrabands Useful,” artist Frank Bellew proposed an absurd and cruel solution. The cartoon grounded its humor in familiar racist stereotypes about African American subservience, gullibility, and childishness.

Confederate Contraband Views

Lacking resources such as paper and ink, fewer periodicals were published in the Confederate states than in the North and only one short-lived humor magazine. But the southern illustrated press occasionally depicted “contrabands” and commented on what the publications viewed as their poor treatment in the North.

And when they did—such as this untitled and crudely engraved two-panel August 1863 cartoon in Southern Punch—the pictures showed neglected and miserable formerly enslaved people living in the North, compared to the benevolence purportedly bestowed on enslaved African Americans who remained in the South.

Defending Slavery

The Southern Punch cartoon first showed a poorly dressed and unhappy-looking elderly African American woman carrying a broom (left). The caption explains she is: “Female contraband, as seen among her Abolition friends, sweeping the streets of New York for bread.”

Beneath her, a second Black woman stood, resplendently dressed, with a contented expression on her face. She is described as: “Happy maid servant at her comfortable home in the South, who did not go among her Yankee ‘friends.’”

Contrabands vs. Freedmen

The “happy maid servant” repeated a pro-slavery visual allegory that was at least thirty years old, claiming that slavery was a “positive good,” and contrasting its supposed benevolent virtues with the cruel exploitation of free African Americans under the North’s “free labor” system.

After 1863, with the Emancipation Proclamation and the enlistment of Black men in the Union Army, the term and figure of the “contraband” in the North was largely replaced by the more active and independent “freedman.” Yet the “contraband” continued to make an appearance in popular culture, particularly cartoons, into Reconstruction.

Reflection Questions

How might you characterize the visual representation of African Americans during the war?

What surprises did you encounter?

How might you compare some of the themes in these images to those of contemporary migrants or refugees in the United States and abroad?

Additional Reading

Kate Masur, “‘A Rare Phenomenon of Philological Vegetation’: The Word ‘Contraband’ and the Meanings of Emancipation in the United States,” Journal of American History 93, no. 4 (March 2007).

William Fletcher Thompson, “Pictorial Images of the Negro During the Civil War,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 48, no. 4 (Summer 1965).

Eric Foner and Joshua Brown, Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005).

Related Chapters

The Civil War: America's Second Revolution, 1861-1865