Existing comment:
Fort Monroe Envelope:
This Civil War envelope portrays a slave catcher stopped short by General Butler (the FFV stands for First Family of Virginia). Although he was no abolitionist, Butler refused to return people to slavery on Constitutional grounds. He argued that the Fugitive Slave Law no longer applied to southerners who left the Union. Before the War, this law permitted slaveholders the right to hunt runaways in the North and demand their return to slavery. |