Selene Castrovilla
Autor(a) de Revolutionary Friends: General George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette
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Obras por Selene Castrovilla
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Estatísticas
- Obras
- 20
- Membros
- 349
- Popularidade
- #68,500
- Avaliação
- 3.4
- Críticas
- 32
- ISBN
- 46
- Marcado como favorito
- 1
Scott, born into slavery near Hampton, Virginia, ran away from a brutal slave owner. He heard that Union soldiers inside Fortress Monroe were friends to Blacks, and he went there and offered to help track down Confederates. Scott was successful in locating thousands of Confederates camped out some eight miles away, and alerted Butler, enabling him to eliminate the threat to Fortress Monroe.
Butler, a former lawyer, reasoned he could hold escaped slaves as “contraband of war.” Contraband, the author explained, or “property used for warlike purposes against the government of the United States," could be legally confiscated. Slaveholders, of course, considered their slaves to be not people but "property." His actions were approved by Lincoln.
Thereafter, Butler wrote again to Lincoln, arguing for Scott’s liberty as well as for that of all the contrabands:
“These human beings must be given the free enjoyment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Congress endorsed this view by passing the Confiscation Act of 1861, signed into law on August 6, 1861, declaring that any property used by the Confederate military, including slaves, could be confiscated by Union forces, thus legalizing the designation of escaped slaves as contraband. Other Confiscation Acts followed. In March of 1862, Congress passed the Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves, which forbade returning enslaved people to Confederate masters or the military. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863, and the Thirteenth Amendment, banishing slavery everywhere in the US, was ratified on December 6, 1865.
In an Afterword, the author argues that the brave contrabands paved the way for emancipation. There were one hundred camps of contrabands by the end of the Civil War, with slave refugees who contributed in various ways to the Union war efforts. As Edward L. Pierce, appointed in the summer of 1861 as Commissioner of Negro Affairs at Fortress Monroe, wrote to Secretary of War Simon Cameron:
“Have they not by their master’s acts, and the state of war, assumed the condition, which we hold to be the normal one, of those made in God’s image? Is not every constitutional, legal, and normal requirement, [both] to the runaway master [and to his] relinquished slaves, thus answered? I confess that my own mind is compelled by this reasoning to look upon them as men and women.”
Extensive back matter includes more information on the contrabands, Benjamin Butler, George Scott, and Fort Monroe, a bibliography, and the Proclamation by President Barack Obama in 2011 establishing the Fort Monroe National Monument.
Gorgeous realistic watercolor illustrations by E.B. Lewis help tell the story.
Evaluation: This dramatic and suspenseful account recommended for grades 1-5 is both thrilling and inspiring.… (mais)