During the hot summer of 1862, some 5,000 recently freed enslaved people were encamped in Harpers Ferry. Some had escaped from their enslavers; others had been seized by U.S. soldiers from Southerners as “contraband of war.” The large U.S. Army contingency stationed at Harpers Ferry—a significant strategic outpost—offered relative protection from bounty hunters, who were trying to capture and return the so-called “contrabands” back into slavery.

During the first years of the Civil War, freed enslaved people generally escaped in one of three ways: seizure by U.S. Army troops; capture, when Union troops took control of the area where they lived; or extrication, another word for escape. Contraband was a broad term used to categorize all three.

The military’s seizure of enslaved people was controversial. Congress nevertheless passed two laws in 1861 and 1862 that expanded the government’s power to grant permanent freedom to people who had escaped or been liberated by Union forces. Thousands did find freedom, particularly after the bloody battles in Virginia in spring and summer 1862. Harpers Ferry, located at the lower end of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and on the border of two warring entities, became a common destination. The influx of 5,000 contraband was twice that of the town’s entire population before the war.

Overwhelmed by the sheer number of freed men, women, and children crossing into Northern lines, the Army set up contraband camps in abandoned buildings and on the grounds of the town’s destroyed U.S. Armory & Arsenal. One of the most striking photos from this time is of makeshift tents in the shadow of the armory’s old engine house, better known as John Brown’s Fort, where the abolitionist made his last stand in October 1859.

George Wingate, regimental historian for the 22^nd New York State Militia, described what he witnessed in Harpers Ferry that summer: “Poor bedraggled, foot-sore wretches” would appear “in the gray of the morning, having walked ten or fifteen miles during the night—frequently a woman, carrying a baby, and with little children clinging to their skirts. The men carried their few possessions in a big bundle, tied to a stick, and the women usually ‘toted’ a roll of bedding. . . . How they lived was a mystery.” 

Many of the freed men and women at Harpers Ferry were put to work building fortifications and roads, assisting with military supplies, cooking, and washing. The average pay of $7 per month was the first time most had ever been paid for their labor. The camps, though, were rife with illness, and untold numbers died, particularly children. 

Harpers Ferry was threatened in May 1862 during “Stonewall” Jackson’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign. Volunteer Union nurse Abba Goddard went to extraordinary efforts to hide and stand armed guard over seven Black cooks and laundresses in the basement of a makeshift hospital so they would not fall into Confederate hands. Jackson was rebuffed on that occasion, but returned in September 1862 and captured nearly the town’s entire garrison, about 12,500 soldiers, the largest surrender of a U.S. army during the war.

Before that onslaught, the Union commander at Harpers Ferry, Colonel Dixon Miles, could have let the contraband escape to the north, but he disagreed with the government’s policy on the issue and refused. While the exact number will never be known, the Richmond Dispatch estimated that 1,000 formerly enslaved people were captured by Jackson’s forces during the Maryland Campaign—which climaxed at the Battle of Antietam. The actual number was likely as high as 4,000. Goddard wrote that Confederate General A. P. Hill’s men, whom she referred to as “human hyenas in search of living prey,” searched through every “nook” and “cranny” of the town to round up Black people, regardless whether they had been free their entire lives or recently freed.

Wingate described what happened next: “All these poor creatures were taken from their houses, formed into a great drove, and driven south like so many cattle, crying and wailing for their lost glimpse of freedom and presenting a heart-rending spectacle as they were marched down the valley.” Confederates made them haul captured materials to the South. Some were returned to those who previously had enslaved them, while others were sold at public auction in Richmond. Few are believed to have escaped.

The message received by Black citizens was that freedom could be fleeting and depended upon the North winning the war. A week after Harpers Ferry’s capture, Lincoln signed the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, calling for the “immediate or gradual abolishment of slavery.” Since the proclamation exempted states and regions not in rebellion against the United States, it effectively freed no one. However, it was an important symbolic signal to Black Americans. In May 1863, Black soldiers began enlisting in the Union army. By the end of the struggle, some 180,000 would fight to unite the nation and secure their freedom.

After Jackson’s withdrawal in September 1862, Harpers Ferry remained in Union hands for the rest of the war, except for four days in 1864. Former enslaved people continued seeking refuge there, especially as the Confederacy lost more of its territory in Virginia in 1864 and 1865. By the end of the war, so many former enslaved people had arrived in Harpers Ferry that it became a regional headquarters for the new U.S. Freedmen’s Bureau and a logical site for a Black school, Storer College, founded by Freewill Baptists and supported by the U.S. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. From 1867 to 1891, Storer was the only college in West Virginia open to Black students; it closed in 1955.