Abstract
This dissertation explores the inner life of the refugee camps of the Civil War.
Called “contraband” camps because the refugees were considered the confiscated slave
property of Confederates, the camps were the first great cultural meeting grounds the war
produced. This dissertation gives close study to the refugee camps over the course of the
Civil War period, comparing the experiences across the South with a special focus on the
religious transformations that occurred there. It analyzes sources through a process of
triangulation—examining slave interviews and narratives, missionary texts, government
military records, and fragmentary evidence collected from various regional archives—in
order to uncover the practices and artifacts outside of institutionally understood religious
rubrics in the study of history. First, this study elucidates the cross-cultural encounter
that took place in the camps not only as an interracial experiment between white and
black but also as an exchange between black slaves of different cultural backgrounds.
Second, this dissertation shows that the camps were breeding grounds for religious
revival. Here was a meeting not of slave religion but of slave religions, and the syncretic
forms and clashes that resulted are not yet described nor understood. Finally, this study
promises to challenge histories of emancipation that celebrate black military service as
the sole source of contraband freedom and citizenship. Rather than creating a solution
for the contrabands, the advent of Union black military recruiting was a trauma, upsetting
family reunions and making claims to land and subsistence more tenuous. This
dissertation evaluates the cost of military service and the alternative scenarios refugees
themselves proposed.