Contrabands
The Civil War shifted the nature of seeking freedom from slave states. Enslaved people began seeking out Union army camps in 1861, and Union armies refused to return enslaved peoples to their Confederate enemies. In response, Congress passed Confiscation Acts which allowed the Union to confiscate enslaved people as “contraband.” These contrabands were put to work in Union camps doing manual labor like cooking and building fortifications, allowing more soldiers to be sent to the battlefield. The use of contrabands would push the Union closer to emancipation, and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 freed any enslaved person who crossed into Union territory. The presence of contrabands in Union camps also led the Union to consider the potential usefulness of free Black soldiers as the war dragged on and white enlistment dropped.[1]
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Eliza Brown was one of many contrabands. Brown escaped a Virginia plantation in 1863 and found General Custer’s camp. She became his cook, where she remained for the rest of the war. Accounts told of Eliza cooking close to gunfire, unshaken. She became a friend to Custer’s wife and traveled with the family to Texas and Kansas after the war. The group survived a dangerous flood near Fort Hays, where they saved several soldiers using a clothesline. Eliza is said to have cooked for the men the next morning.[2]
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While Custer's attitudes towards slavery and enslaved people were complicated,[3] Eliza's time in his camp was nevertheless significant, and her presence, like the presence of many other contrabands, provided the needed push for Union soldiers to consider their attitudes towards race and slavery.
Eliza moved to Athens in 1870, and in 1873 she married Andrew Jackson Davison, a freedman who was the first Black practicing attorney in Athens County. She was one of many contrabands who moved into Northern states during and after the war. More on Athens' response to the contraband population can be found here. Eliza was not a soldier, but many escaped slaves had come to Union camps before and after Eliza joined Custer. Her story is one of many examples of how white military officers benefitted from enslaved people seeking freedom during the war.
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Eliza Brown, General George Custer, and Elizabeth Custer, 1865. Courtesy of Tom O'Grady.
Notes
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1. Joseph T. Glatthaar, “Black Glory: The African-American Role in Union Victory,” in Gabor S. Boritt, Why the Confederacy Lost (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 139-147.
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2. Ada Woodson Adams and Nancy E. Aiken, A Significant Presence: A Pictorial Glimpse of the Black Experience in Athens County, Ohio (Chesterhill, OH: Multicultural Genealogical Center, 2004), 14.
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3. Keith Donohue, interview with T. J. Stiles, “Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of America,” Authors on the Record: Custer’s Trials 47, no. 4 (winter 2015). National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2015/winter/custer.html?fbclid=IwAR0AznWnr8xA9k3HKFG4A-ZwoZjTLWwR3xgCZXX5cSk3qeR9KPGJ06DEKaQ
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Image: Eliza Brown with General George Custer and Elizabeth Custer, 1865. Courtesy of Tom O’Grady, Southeast Ohio History Center.
