Entry · catalog no. 8405
contraband
/ /ˈkɑntrəˌbænd/ /KON-truh-band
noun · Fort Monroe, Virginia, and Union-held territory · 1860s
✓ Verified
1.
A formerly enslaved person who escaped to Union lines during the Civil War, classed as property seized from the enemy.
“Thousands of contrabands gathered around Fort Monroe.”
2.
Used by Black Americans, with irony, to describe the strange legal status of the self-liberated.
“They were contrabands in law and free people in fact.”
Origin & Attribution
In May 1861, three enslaved men — Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory, and James Townsend — escaped to Fort Monroe in Virginia, and Union General Benjamin Butler declined to return them, calling them contraband of war because the Confederacy was using enslaved labor. The label stuck and was applied to the thousands who followed, and the Confiscation Act of August 1861 gave it legal footing. Black communities used the word while resenting its reduction of people to property. Camps such as the Grand Contraband Camp in Hampton became early free Black communities.
1861
Butler declines to return Baker, Mallory, and Townsend at Fort Monroe
1861
Confiscation Act gives the label legal footing
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Fort Monroe, Virginia, and Union-held territory · 1860s
Spoken by
Union officers, then formerly enslaved people and their descendants
$CONTRAThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady165 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
30/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1861
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
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Citations & Sources
■
Contraband (American Civil War), Wikipedia
article
■
The Contraband Question, HistoryNet
article
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+ Cite a sourceContrabands and Freedmen, Mr. Lincoln and Freedom
article
See also