[Fortress Monroe, Va.] May 27 /61
Sir
(Duplicate)
. . . .
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. Of course these cannot be dealt with upon the Theory on which I designed to treat the services of able bodied men and women who might come within my lines and of which I gave you a detailed account in my last dispatch.1 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, keeping a strict and accurate account as well of the services as of the expenditure having the worth of the services and the cost of the expenditure determined by a board of Survey hereafter to be detailed. I know of no other manner in which to dispose of this subject and the questions connected therewith. As a matter of 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 of the value of sixty thousand dollars. Twelve of these negroes I am informed have escaped from the erection of the batteries on Sewall's point which this morning fired upon my expedition as it passed by out of range. As a means of offence therefore in the enemy's hands these negroes when able bodied are of the last importance. Without them 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.
. . . .
Benj. F. Butler
Excerpt from Benj. F. Butler to Lieutenant Genl. Scott, 27 May 1861, B-99 1861, Letters Received Irregular, Secretary of War, Record Group 107, National Archives.
1. Three days earlier, the commander, General Benjamin F. Butler, had informed General-in-Chief Winfield Scott that three slaves belonging to one Colonel Mallory, commander of Confederate forces in the district, had “delivered themselves up” to his picket guards. Butler had interrogated the fugitives personally and, finding that they were about to be taken south for Confederate service, had determined “as these men were very serviceable, and I had great need of labor in my quartermaster's department, to avail myself of their services.” Questioned by another officer concerning his reception of the slaves, Butler had offered to return them if Mallory would take the oath of allegiance. Aware that this was only one instance of many that would soon be before him, Butler had asked Scott for a statement of general policy: “Shall they [the Confederates] be allowed the use of this property against the United States, and we not be allowed its use in aid of the United States?” In endorsements, Scott found “much to praise . . . and nothing to condemn” in Butler's action, and Secretary of War Simon Cameron concurred. (The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 vols. [Washington, 1880–1901], series 1, vol. 2, pp. 648–52.)
Published in The Destruction of Slavery, pp. 70–72, and in Free at Last, pp. 9–10.