Refugees Rushing to Washington, D.C.

A Civil War-era article in the September 5, 1862, edition of The Liberator gives a first-hand account of the large number of Blacks fleeing enslavement and arriving in Washington, D.C. in search of freedom behind Federal lines. The author, Harriet Jacobs, then serving as the Washington, D.C., correspondent for the New York Tribune, wrote:

I saw nearly a hundred men, women and children, with their personal effects all in a few old bags, going across the Potomac, evidently feeling that that stream, like Jordan, was the only barrier to their future perfect happiness and contentment.

Jacobs, formerly enslaved herself, was working with the refugee population in Washington, D.C. and nearby Alexandria. She recognized the "most pitiable and destitute condition" they arrived in, but considered their condition preferable to the thousands of Blacks on the road seeking freedom who had been "detained and driven away by the rebel cavalry."