9. The Gettysburg Campaign of 1863
By the summer of 1863, somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 slaves and free blacks were with Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in its several encampments along the Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers. Following Lee’s victory over the Union Army at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May, 1863, he decided to again take the battle to the North. Similar to his Maryland Campaign, Lee believed striking into a Northern state untouched by war would readily resupply his army. In June his troops, shielded by the mountains, marched into Pennsylvania. An unknown number of slaves accompanied the troops north.
A British military officer, traveling under his announced rank of “Captain and Lieutenant Colonel”, named Arthur Fremantle, joined Confederate General James Longstreet’s Corps on June 30. Fremantle was a member of the famous Coldstream Guards, though he was in America in an unofficial capacity. Prior to meeting Longstreet, he observed most of the Army of Northern Virginia, including its slave encampments and the activity therein. Fremantle wrote that each of Lee’s regiments had “twenty to thirty…slaves”. That number equates to about 2,000 for each of the three Corps which fought at Gettysburg, roughly 6,000 overall. They were, presumably for the first time of their lives, in a free state.