Rogue Wave Films

On May 23, 1861, little more than a month into the Civil War, three young black men rowed across the James River in Virginia and claimed asylum in the Union-held Fort Monroe. Under cover of darkness, in a stolen boat, these brave men escaped slavery from a confederate military camp, not knowing what kind of treatment they would meet at the fort. If the federal officers sent them back, they maybe punished as runaways — perhaps even as traitors. Little did they know that they were they were also starting a chain of events that would lead to the end of slavery in the United States.

 

This action drama is a true story of how escaped men, women and children, who were slaves, became know as “contraband of war”. It is also the story of how Maj. Gen. Benjamin Franklin Butler, a lawyer before the war, used his knowledge of military law to refuse the return of any slave to his master, despite the fact that it was against U.S constitutional law. Freedom Fort is the historical story of the events that lead to thousands of slaves seeking refuse in union camps. Ultimately it changed the course of the war. The main focus of the war had been to preserve the Union. When Lincoln finally unveiled the Emancipation Proclamation in the fall of 1862, freedom for slaves became a legitimate war aim.