"In late May 1861, three escaped slaves showed up at Fortress Monroe, a Union stronghold on the tip of Virginia's Peninsula, claiming they had been forced by their master to dig a Confederate battery position. It happened that the officer commanding this post- indeed, in charge of the entire Department of Virginia- was a Massachusetts lawyer and politician turned general named Benjamin Franklin Butler. Like his colonial namesake, Butler possessed a seemingly limitless stock of shrewd ingenuity. When a Confederate officer presented himself and demanded that this human property be returned under existing laws, Butler refused. He argued that because in this case the blacks had been employed against the U.S. government, they had become legitimate contraband of war and thus fair game for confiscation. Butler would later lay claim to being the first to utilize the term "contraband" in this context; in fact, the evidence is a bit murky on that point, though it is certainly true that through his act he established a precedent that other, likeminded Union officers were quick to follow. Suddenly the small Federal enclaves began to attract a growing number of male slaves and their families. Butler's fateful action was further legitimized on August 8, when the U.S. Congress authorized the seizure of all Southern property used "in aid of the rebellion"- a definition that specifically included slaves. From his editorial pulpit, Frederick Douglass issued a strident call to "Let the slaves and free colored people be called into service, and formed into a liberating army.""