It will be seen, that, accurately speaking, the term applies exclusively to the relation between a belligerent and a neutral, and not to the relation between belligerents.  Under the strict law of nations, all the property of an enemy may be seized.  Under the Common Law, the property of traitors is forfeit.  The humaner usage of modern times favors the waiving of these strict rights, but allows,—­without question, the seizure and confiscation of all such goods as are immediately auxiliary to military purposes.  These able-bodied negroes, held as slaves, were to be employed to build breastworks, to transport or store provisions, to serve as cooks or waiters, and even to bear arms.  Regarded as property, according to their master’s claim, they could be efficiently used by the Rebels for the purposes of the Rebellion, and most efficiently by the Government in suppressing it.  Regarded as persons, they had escaped from communities where a triumphant rebellion had trampled on the laws, and only the rights of human nature remained, and they now asked the protection of the Government, to which, in prevailing treason, they were still loyal, and which they were ready to serve as best they could.

The three negroes, being held contraband of war, were at once set to work to aid the masons in constructing a new bakehouse within the fort.  Thenceforward the term “contraband” bore a new signification, with which it will pass into history, designating the negroes who had been held as slaves, now adopted under the protection of the Government.  It was used in official communications at the fort.  It was applied familiarly to the negroes, who stared somewhat, inquiring, “What d’ ye call us that for?” Not having Wheaton’s “Elements” at hand, we did not attempt an explanation.  The contraband notion was adopted by Congress in the Act of July 6th, which confiscates slaves used in aiding the Insurrection.  There is often great virtue in such technical phrases in shaping public opinion.  They commend practical action to a class of minds little developed in the direction of the sentiments, which would be repelled by formulas of a broader and nobler import.  The venerable gentleman, who wears gold spectacles and reads a conservative daily, prefers confiscation to emancipation.  He is reluctant to have slaves declared freemen, but has no objection to their being declared contrabands.  His whole nature rises in insurrection when Beecher preaches in a sermon that a thing ought to be done because it is a duty, but he yields gracefully when Butler issues an order commanding it to be done because it is a military necessity.

On the next day, Major John B. Cary, another Rebel officer, late principal of an academy in Hampton, a delegate to the Charleston Convention, and a seceder with General Butler from the Convention at Baltimore, came to the fort with a flag of truce, and, claiming to act as the representative of Colonel Mallory, demanded the fugitives.  He reminded General Butler of his obligations under the Federal Constitution, under which he claimed to act.  The ready reply was, that the Fugitive-Slave Act could not be invoked for the reclamation of fugitives from a foreign State, which Virginia claimed to be, and she must count it among the infelicities of her position, if so far at least she was taken at her word.