This is the same Robert E. Lee whose Army, during Gettysburg, kidnapped free blacks and sold them into slavery. http://t.co/9f6NWzcrNx

— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) June 26, 2015

In June 1863, when Brig. Gen. Albert Jenkins’ cavalry, in the vanguard of the Confederate army, galloped into Pennsylvania, its aim wasn’t only to spy and steal supplies.

The soldiers were also determined, as historian Margaret Creighton notes, to round up African-Americans, whom the Confederates regarded as “contraband” that should be returned to “rightful” owners.

The “slave hunt,” as contemporaries and later historians called this phase of the Confederate invasion, would last as long as Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia remained in Pennsylvania. It ended only when the defeated Southern troops retreated back to Virginia after the Battle of Gettysburg.