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The outbreak of the Civil War in April did nothing to change the army’s policy. “The Fugitive Slave Act,” Harper’s Weekly pointed out, “is not to be found in the Army Regulations.” Nonetheless, by the end of the month some thirty Florida slaves who had escaped to Fort Pickens suffered the same fate as the initial four. In April and May, as Union forces made their way through Maryland to protect Washington, hundreds of slaves flocked to their lines or took the occasion to escape to Pennsylvania. Seeking to ensure the loyalty of local whites, Union commanders in the border states, and in enclaves of Confederate territory where the army ventured, issued strict orders to their troops to respect private property and return runaway slaves, and assured residents that they harbored no “animosity” toward them or their institutions. Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act continued. A week after the war began, the U.S. marshal appointed by Lincoln arrested several fugitives in Chicago. Three months into the conflict, a Maryland newspaper pointed out that more escaped slaves had been returned to their owners under Lincoln “than during the whole of Mr. Buchanan’s presidential term.”2

The flight of slaves should not have come as a surprise. Thousands had sought refuge with British forces during the struggle for independence and the War of 1812. Whatever the announced policies of the Lincoln administration, slaves, as a Kansas newspaper put it, viewed the Civil War as their “hour of opportunity,” the dawn of freedom. Acting on this belief, they took actions that placed the issue of slavery on the national agenda and helped to propel America down the road to emancipation.3

The war, the New York Times would observe a year and a half into the conflict, shattered many myths. Despite southern propaganda, slaves turned out to be “earnestly desirous of liberty,” possessed a keen understanding of “the questions at issue in this war,” and had “far more rapid and secret” ways of disseminating news among themselves “than ever was dreamed of at the North.” As the war progressed and Union armies occupied larger and larger portions of the South, the trickle of runaways became a flood. “Slave labor is disappearing so rapidly,” a member of Maryland’s legislature complained early in 1862, “that our lands must go untilled.” As the navy patrolled the southern coast to enforce the blockade, slaves came to the shore hoping to escape to their ships. Some succeeded in doing so. When a small Union flotilla sailed up the Stono River in South Carolina in May 1862, the crew observed cavalry pursuing a “stampede of slaves” fleeing to avoid relocation inland. After opening fire on the Confederate forces and dispersing them, the naval commander took more than seventy slaves on board. He settled them in a safe location near the coast. That same month, in one of the war’s most celebrated acts of individual daring, Robert Smalls, the slave pilot of the Confederate naval vessel Planter, brought on board his wife, child, and a dozen other slaves, guided the ship out of Charleston harbor, and surrendered it to the Union navy.4

By 1864, nearly 400,000 slaves had made their way to Union lines. Long before then, the escape of slaves powerfully affected both sides in the Civil War. Most slaves did not have the opportunity to flee, but the escape of those who did made those who remained “restless and discontented.” Fear of escape caused owners to remove slaves to the southern interior, far from the battle lines, and prompted the Confederate government to reinforce plantation discipline by exempting one adult male from military service for every twenty slaves. These measures disrupted the institution of slavery and caused serious dissension in southern white society. The situation also undermined discipline within the Union army, as some soldiers defied orders by encouraging fugitives and refusing to assist in “returning a poor wretch to slavery,” in the words of Colonel Harvey Brown, the commander at Fort Pickens.5

As the New York Herald explained at