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This photograph was taken in 1862, Cumberland, Virginia just prior to the signing of the\u00a0Emancipation Proclamation<\/strong>\u00a0(1863)<\/a>\u00a0which abolished slavery.<\/p>\nThe photo makes you wonder \u201cWho are these people?\u201d \u201cHow did they live?\u201d \u201cWhat happened after they were freed?\u201d \u201cDid they go to the North or to the West?\u201d \u201cOr did they stay in the South?\u201d Freedom to people who had been enslaved all their lives, was a foreign notion that left more questions then answers.<\/p>\n
Contrabands in Cumberland, Virginia<\/strong>, (1862). What do you see when looking at these\u00a0contraband slaves<\/a>\u00a0posed in front of \u201cFoller\u2019s house?\u201d<\/p>\n The house is probably the residence of their former owner. The photograph was taken in 1862, during the\u00a0Peninsula Campaign<\/a>\u00a0by photographer\u00a0James F. Gibson<\/a>, who may have had the same fascination with enslaved blacks as the rest of the people in the North. \u201d<\/p>\n The so-called \u201ccontrabands\u201d (enslaved blacks within Union lines prior to the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863) were more than a curiosity however. They also posed a real problem to whites in general and the Union army in particular as to what to do with them.<\/p>\n Up to this point in the war, the Union had not fully committed its forces to the idea of the Civil War as a war to end slavery, but rather to a limited war to preserve the Union.<\/p>\n Slaves, on the other hand, forced the issue by seeking out the Union forces in droves, looking for protection, and offering their services to the army that would one day free them permanently.<\/p>\n