1861_ The Civil War Awakening - Adam Goodheart [226]
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In 1862, Benjamin Butler, then commanding Union forces in occupied New Orleans, became one of the first Union commanders to enlist Negro troops, which he did without authorization from the Lincoln administration. He fought (unsuccessfully) to secure equal treatment, including equal pay, for black soldiers, as well as to protect them from the Confederate policy of reenslaving them when captured as prisoners of war. When his colored troops fought with conspicuous gallantry in the assault on Richmond, he personally designed medals for the men, to be struck in silver at his own expense. These bore the Latin inscription Ferro iis libertas perveniet: “Their freedom will be won by the sword.”
Butler’s harshness in maintaining order and quashing pro-Confederate sentiment in New Orleans—along with his unbending support for black civil rights—made him hated throughout most of the South. The general’s enemies nicknamed him “Beast Butler” and “Spoons Butler,” the latter because of a false rumor that he had stolen silver spoons from the house of a rebel commander.
After the war, Butler reentered politics as a radical Republican and was instrumental in passing the federal Civil Rights Act of 1875, which mandated equal treatment for blacks in all public accommodations, including restaurants, hotels, and trains. The law was never enforced in the South, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1883. Its provisions did not become part of federal law again until the civil rights legislation of the 1960s.12
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Over the course of the war, Hampton, Virginia, became home to thousands of black contrabands, who officially became freedmen and freedwomen when the Emancipation Proclamation took effect on New Year’s Day, 1863. The liberated slaves built houses and makeshift shelters among the burned-out ruins of the old town, and turned the brick shell of the former courthouse into a school and church. The classes taught by Northern abolitionists and missionaries under General Butler’s auspices eventually evolved into Hampton University, one of the leading historically black institutions in the country.13
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Charles King Mallory remained in Confederate service until 1865. His eldest son, an eighteen-year-old midshipman in the rebel navy, was killed in the war. Mallory died in 1875; an account of his funeral in a local newspaper described it thus: “The procession, nearly three-quarters of a mile long, proceeded to the old family burying ground … eight miles from Hampton. The fact that a very large number of the colored citizens of Hampton and the county walked the entire distance shows how much the deceased was loved and respected by all classes.” The site of Colonel Mallory’s house, long since demolished, is part of the Hampton University campus.14
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At the end of the war, Mary Chesnut, a refugee from her plantation and from her family’s ruined fortunes, greeted the demise of slavery with an emotion she described in her diary as “an unholy joy.”15
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After serving almost continuously as the site of a military base for more than four hundred years, Fortress Monroe is slated to be decommissioned in September 2011. As of this writing, its future is uncertain. The governor of Virginia has endorsed a “mixed-use” development of residential and commercial space combined with “historic preservation.” Some Hampton locals, led by African-Americans, including descendants of the contrabands, are calling on the National Park Service to acquire the site.16
At the end of the Civil War, Jefferson Davis was imprisoned in Fortress Monroe for two years before being released on bail; he was never brought to trial.
Today, the fort contains a Jefferson Davis Memorial Park. There is no memorial or monument to Benjamin Butler or the contrabands.
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The three original contrabands all remained in the Hampton Roads area after the war. Frank Baker and James Townsend raised families and worked as day laborers;