The "Reliable Contraband", 1876 (etching)

Created by Forbes, a member of the French Etching Club, while he travelled with the Union Army from 1862-1865. Marked "Plate 23." A scene at the cavalry outpost. In the foreground a black runaway slave, a contraband of war, is leading an old horse and is seen hesitatingly imparting to anxious officers what little information he posses of the enemy's movements. Cavalrymen and their horses are grouped about the house in the middle ground, and in the distance a look-out is sitting on his horse watching the road through the woods, in anticipation of the approach of the enemy.