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 582 Fugitive slaves. [isei of the decision and the pertinency of the retort were highly appreciated by public opinion ; and, from that time till the end of the war, the term "contraband' 1 became the popular designation of every negro in military lines. The question was early brought to the official attention of the government. The Virginia Peninsula was strongly Secessionist; and a speedy abandonment of neighbouring plantations followed the gathering of Federal troops at Fortress Monroe. In the confusion of flight many slaves, dreading to be sold to the extreme South, managed to escape to the fort, not alone as individuals, but often coming by whole families ; and, a month later, General Butler had under his care 900 negroes, 300 of whom were able-bodied men, the rest being old men, women, and children. In his report to the Secretary of War the general set forth the complications involved in the novel problem. What should be done with these slaves, and what was their legal status ? Were they property or men, women, and children? Were theyjlotsam and jetsam? Could the United States own slave property ? Was a slave whose master ran away a fugitive? Might troops harbour negro children, or must they leave them to starve when they had destroyed all means of subsistence, or driven off the rebel masters? Should commanders of regiments or battalions decide whether a black man fled from his master or the master from him ? How were the free-born to be distinguished ? Before the War Department answered these inquiries, a law of Congress, passed at the special session, confiscated the proprietary rights of slave-owners in such of their slaves as they permitted or required to be employed in aid of rebellion or in hostile service; and thereupon the Secretary of War laid down the following general rules. 1. In States wholly or partly in insurrection, rights to slave property and service must be subject to military necessity. . Military authorities must obey the Confiscation Act. 3. Claims to such service cannot safely be decided by military authority. The general was therefore directed to employ fugitive slaves in necessary labour, trusting that, on the return of peace, Congress would compensate loyal masters. As the war continued, many larger aggregations of fugitive slaves came under the care and protection of the Union armies. When the navy captured Port Royal harbour, and an adjoining sea front thirty miles in extent, comprising the famous Sea Island Cotton region of South Carolina, nearly ten thousand slaves, whom the flight of the great cotton planters left destitute, came into the Federal lines. Military and official organisation provided them with food, shelter, and government through the whole of the war, employing those capable of labour in gathering the old and raising new cotton crops, while private charity and volunteer teachers from Northern cities supplied an element of social control, religious leadership, and free primary instruction. The rules for dealing with masses of fugitive slaves in disloyal districts