Unnamed Re-Enslaved Negroes

In "Raid" and again in The Unvanquished there is a large group of Negroes who sought freedom with the Union army but who are turned over to Rosa Millard because of a clerical error. They are part of a much larger group of self-emancipated slaves, to Bayard it "looks like a thousand" (52, 110), who are waiting beside the pile of confiscated chests and the pen full of confiscated mules when Rosa Millard presents the faulty requisition order that calls for "110 Negroes of both sexes" to be "repossessed" to her (54, 112). She is actually given over well over two hundred Negroes by the army, who seem anxious to be rid of them. "About half of them" are from Alabama, the rest presumably from Mississippi (55, 114). We have identified them as "Slaves" because, when Rosa asks them who they are "going to mind from now on," one of them says "You, missy" (55, 115). When she tells the ones from Alabama to "Go home," i.e. back to their plantations, they apparently do (55, 115).