Lee's Slave Hunters.

I have just come across a Ted Alexander's 2001 North and South article entitled "A Regular Slave Hunt." This article highlights a sad and little known aspect of Lee's Gettysburg campaign. Alexander wrote that in June and July 1863 Confederate forces rounded up hundreds of free blacks and escaped slaves throughout southern Pennsylvania.

Alexander has provided evidence, eyewitness testimony, to show that Confederate forces participated and what amounted to slave hunting. Some of the most disturbing evidence came from Rachel Cormany, who left a detailed account of some of the abductions. Cormany wrote: "[Confederates] were hunting up the contrabands [escaped slaves] and driving them off by droves. O! how it grated on our hearts to have to sit quietly and look at such brutal deeds--I saw no men among the contrbands--all women and children. Some of the colored people who were raised here were taken along--I sat on the front step as they were driven by just like we would drive cattle...One woman was pleading wonderfully with her driver for her children--but all the sympathy she received from him was a rough "March along"--at which she quickened her pace again." Alexander was not precise about how many blacks were captured by Confederates; an estimate for Chambersburg places its count at 250 and an estimate for York states that a little more than 100 were abducted in this town.

Alexander went on the state that most of the Confederates who participated in these kidnappings were guerrilla forces who "operated on the fringes of Lee's army." He did provide evidence that General James Longstreet knew about these abductions and that the famed General George Pickett's division participated in the kidnappings. Alexander, however, left some rather important questions unanswered. Were the orders to abduct free blacks and escaped slaves general orders or were they issued independently of the high command? To what extent did Lee's regular forces participate in the kidnappings? We know that Pickett's division participated, but did others do the same? This is a disturbing aspect of the Gettysburg campaign that deserves to be fully examined, but, unfortunately, Alexander's article leaves us with more questions than answers.