contraband of war

noun

International Law.

1. goods that a neutral nation cannot supply to a belligerent nation except at the risk of seizure and confiscation.

Word History and Origins

Origin of contraband of war¹

First recorded in 1795–1805

Example Sentences

“During the Civil War they fled the brutality of slavery in search of the promise of safety offered by the Union General Benjamin F. Butler. He had made it known that he would consider people who had escaped to be ‘contraband of war’ and would protect them from slave patrollers and bounty hunters and would not return them to slavery.”

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Declared “contraband” of war, they were employed and paid wages according to the gendered norms prevalent in the North: the men building fortifications and hauling military supplies, the women cooking, washing and mending clothes for soldiers along with the multitude of others fleeing Southern plantations.

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Historians have argued that Butler’s so-called contraband of war policy did not concern itself with the Black men’s humanity.

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It was just months into the Civil War in 1861 when Union leaders declared that slaves who reached Union lines would not be returned to their Confederate owners and instead be considered “contraband” of war since they came from a self-proclaimed foreign land.

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It witnessed the beginning of slavery but also the end: early in the civil war, three enslaved men seeking freedom escaped to Fort Monroe and were deemed by the commander as “contraband of war”, spurring thousands to seek sanctuary behind Union lines and ultimately a shift in government policy towards emancipation.

Read more on The Guardian