The Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves was a law passed by the United States Congress during the American Civil War forbidding the military to return escaped slaves to their owners. As Union armies entered Southern territory during the early years of the War, emboldened slaves began fleeing behind Union lines to secure their freedom. Some commanders put the slaves to work digging entrenchments, building fortifications, and performing other camp work. Such slaves came to be called "contraband," a term emphasizing their status as captured enemy property. Other Army commanders—particularly Democrats—returned the slaves to their owners. Congress reacted by approving on March 13, 1862 an act prohibiting the military from sending escaped slaves back into slavery.
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Famous quotes containing the words act, prohibiting, return and/or slaves:
“It was the most ungrateful and unjust act ever perpetrated by a republic upon a class of citizens who had worked and sacrificed and suffered as did the women of this nation in the struggle of the Civil War only to be rewarded at its close by such unspeakable degradation as to be reduced to the plane of subjects to enfranchised slaves.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“There’s no law against taking off a spaceship. It’s never been done so they haven’t gotten around to prohibiting it.”
—Rip Van Ronkel, and Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988)
“If a man, notoriously and designedly, insults and affronts you, knock him down; but if he only injures you, your best revenge is to be extremely civil to him in your outward behaviour, though at the same time you counterwork him, and return him the compliment, perhaps with interest.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“I do not wish, it happens, to be associated with Massachusetts, either in holding slaves or in conquering Mexico. I am a little better than herself in these respects.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)