Last Road to Freedom

For 16 years, this website has been devoted to discussion and publication of Civil War contraband (refugee) camps and the registers (logs) created at the camps. It will continue to have that purpose while added to it will be discussion of USCT data. In not a few cases, the names recorded in contraband camp registers are connected to names of Black soldiers. This makes sense as much recruiting for service took place within the camps.

Our ancestors searched for freedom in the context of chattel slavery and in the wartime context. For their descendants, paths to freedom include interpreting information (documents) the once enslaved left behind. Fighting for widespread access and publication of documents and the privileges of interpretation are a final path or road to freedom. This site will continue this mission until knowing one’s ancestors, because that information no longer is hoarded by public and private entities but instead is part of a public datasphere, is like breathing.

In short, the registers–many of which inform site users of the pre-war residence of formerly enslaved persons or of their former masters or mistresses–have proven invaluable to family historians and others seeking to discover and create untold narratives of America’s past. LastRoad intends to continue researching, transcribing, and digitizing this critical information as it unlocks heretofore closed doors to the past.

Datasets

Contraband Camp Registers

Sample Register

Contraband camp registers alone tweak American memory as they name former slaves and former slave owners for the first time in the form of camp logs, making the names indelible, etching them into the nation’s social, political, and economic histories. Made conspicuous within discourses of slavery, Civil War and Emancipation, the question becomes how Americans will respond to slavery’s new visibility in the digital era.

USCT Pension Files

USCT Soldier’s Service Records

Other

Miscellaneous Camp Documents

Officers’ Correspondence

American Missionary Association Correspondence