Contraband Portraits: Vexed Images of African American Emancipation

From the arrival of three bondsmen at Fort Monroe in August 1861, and Major General Benjamin Butler's refusal to return the men to their Confederate masters, the growing presence of formerly enslaved peoples in Union encampments, who would come to be referred to as "contraband of war," captivated Northern audiences. Appearing in various photographic media, drawings of camp life, exhibition paintings, engravings and lithographs in the illustrated press, political cartoons, and minstrel ephemera, "contraband" saturated the visual landscape of the early 1860's United States. Occasionally, such images depicted large swells of black figures racing toward the safety of Union lines; figures entertaining or laboring for troops in servile positions akin to their recent enslavement; or communities and family units that would set the stage for idealized depictions of post-emancipation life. Most often, the contraband appeared as a singular, male figure in ragged clothing—a non-threatening symbol of an impoverished livelihood under chattel slavery that could be used to harness sympathy and support for the Union army.

This talk explores the visual culture of the contraband trope and the complex picture of African American emancipation this body of images presented. A close examination of several cartes de visite portraits of men poised in the guise of the contraband intended for printed reproduction and wide circulation illuminate the liminal position between free and enslaved, individual and type, and self-possession and public symbol in which their subjects existed.