This image depicts a family of African Americans migrating with a horse drawn carriage. Many African Americans left the South following the Emancipation Proclamation. Fugitive slaves from the South who escaped to union lines were called contraband, that is, confiscated enemy property. This family was quite unusual in that it was able to stay together; rather than stay on the farm, the family chose to throw themselves at the mercy of the Yankees. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization was an American political magazine based in New York City and published by Harper & Brothers from 1857 until 1916. It featured foreign and domestic news, fiction, essays on many subjects and humor, alongside illustrations. It covered the American Civil War extensively, including many illustrations of events from the war.

Harper's Weekly (Jan. 31, 1863), p.68.

English

Image is in the public domain. Metadata is available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

HW0018

North America

"Slave Contrabands Coming into Camp in Consequence of the Proclamation", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed September 30, 2023, http://slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/660