A Slave’s Passport to Freedom.
After hearing about the President’s emancipation of slaves in areas of rebellion, 35-year-old Margaret Myers escapes bondage in her war-torn, border state of Missouri and reaches the Union lines in Kentucky. After being examined by a Captain Garritt of the Third Kentucky Cavalry, an officer of the Presidential Commission investigating “Contraband and Captive Negroes,” she is issued this partially printed document that declares that she, ” … by the President’s Proclamation is entitled to [unrestricted] freedom … and entitled to pass North of the Ohio River into free territory.” Louisville, Kentucky, April 17, 1863.
The Emancipation Proclamation’s meaning and its provisions were especially confusing to slaves held within Unionist border states, like Missouri and Kentucky, where the practice of Slavery continued unabated with federal commanders ordered to return runaways to owners, while slaves coming from more southerly areas of were liberated en masse.
Federal soldiers stationed in Border States at times responded to the President’s directive by defying it due to “the reproach of returning fugatives [sic] from oppression to their fetters and chains,” wrote Col. William Utley of the 22nd Wisconsin Volunteers in a letter to the President on December 17, 1862, defending the humane actions of both his troops and himself in Missouri. “In some instances orders have been obtained from commanding generals to the regiment demanding the rendition of such fugatives. Such orders, I considered unorthorised [sic] recognizing you alone as authority in these matters, and, on that ground, I have refused to obey them.”
Although the above pass has been hastily processed, folded, and a bit worn from her sojourn, one can scarcely imagine how Margaret must have felt upon receiving her passport from the President. Had she only known that she was supposed to have been returned to her owner, she would have considered her deliverance miraculous indeed!