March 13, 1862: The Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves was passed by Congress, a major legislative step away from the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and toward the Emancipation Proclamation. Most specifically, it forbade Union military leaders from commanding their troops to assist in returning self-liberators from slavery to their former enslavers. Sandwiched between the First Confiscation Act and Second Confiscation Act, these three pieces of legislation together strengthened Union commitment to enlisting and protecting formerly enslaved people. Historian Cheri LaFlamme Szcodronski centers self-liberators themselves in framing these acts. She writes, “[This legislation] escalated the situation. It emboldened slaves [sic] to leave their homes for Union lines in anticipation of their apparently imminent freedom.” At this point, President Lincoln still hesitated about full emancipation because he worried about how border states would respond. By July 1862, four months after the Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves, Lincoln first proposed uncompensated immediate abolition in Confederate areas. This was realized on January 1, 1863, through the Emancipation Proclamation.
Recommended reading to learn more:
Citations: “Twenty-sixth United States Colored Volunteer Infantry, massed. Camp William Penn, Pennsylvania,” photograph (Cheltonham Township, PA, c. 1863-1865), National Archives, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/533126?objectPage=3; Cheri LaFlamme Szcodronski, “From Contraband to Freedmen: General Grant, Chaplain Eaton, and Grand Junction, Tennessee,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 72, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 110-112, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43825603.
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