Grant's Contraband Conundrum - NYTimes.com The Lincoln administration may not have gone to war in 1861 to end slavery, but no one bothered to tell that to the slaves. Within six weeks of the firing on Fort Sumter, Gen. Benjamin Butler was forced to decide what to do with three slaves who escaped to Fortress Monroe on the north shore of Virginia's James River. Butler, certainly no abolitionist, nonetheless refused to return the three to their owner, labeling them "contrabands of war." The term, suitably ambiguous for an administration that as yet had no policy on how to handle the fugitives, found immediate acceptance. As one Union officer wrote, "Never was a word so speedily adopted by so many people in so short a time." Within weeks hundreds of "contrabands" - men, women and children - flocked to Fortress Monroe and other Union Army positions. Unsure what might greet them, the escaped slaves were yet confident that life under federal control must surely represent an improvement. It took the federal government more than a year to devise a policy in answer to this thirst for freedom. In August 1861, the First Confiscation Act stripped slaveholders of their claim of ownership, but it failed to clarify whether the slaves were themselves free. The following March Congress prohibited the military from sending escaped slaves back into slavery, and in July the Second Confiscation Act decreed that all slaves that took refuge in Union areas were "captives of war" and would be set free. These legislative actions took on ever greater significance as Union forces moved deeper and deeper into Confederate territory. The growing number of contrabands reaching federal lines necessitated the establishment of dozens of impromptu contraband camps. A draft map compiled by the National Park Service illustrates how the network of these generally transitory camps mirrored the advance of the Union Army along the Mississippi, Tennessee and Cumberland River systems. Grant's Army of the Tennessee spent the summer of 1862 protecting supply lines in western Tennessee and northern Mississippi. Victories at the Battle of Iuka in September and the Battle of Corinth in early October solidified Union control of the area. Lincoln's announcement of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on Sept. 22, 1862, produced an even greater flood of refugees. How best to use and care for these contrabands proved particularly vexing for military leaders under Grant's command. "You have no idea of the consternation Old Abe's Proclamation is making," wrote Gen. Grenville Dodge to his brother in September. The contrabands "will not even wait until 1st January. I do not know what we shall do with them. Many of these fugitives arrived in an appalling condition. "There were men, women, and children in every stage of disease or decrepitude often nearly naked, with flesh torn by the terrible experiences of their escape," wrote one observer. Often the slaves met prejudices against their color more bitter than any they had left behind. On Nov. 11, 1862, Grant took the first step toward addressing the crisis: he named John Eaton, a former high school principal and chaplain of the 27th Ohio Infantry, as superintendent of contrabands and set him at work "organizing them into suitable companies for working." A month later he went further. "The negroes will be clothed, and in every way provided for, out of their earnings" - about 12.5 cents for each pound of cotton picked - "so far as practicable," he ordered. In no case will negroes be forced into the service of the Government, or be enticed away from their homes except when it becomes a military necessity. Grant's policies lent the contraband camps an official status and began to define what a freedman could and could not do once within the Union lines. Personally, Grant appears to have had no particular sympathy for the refugees. He seems to have recognized that, in the words of one observer, "The soldiers of our army were a good deal opposed to serving the Negro in any manner." Nevertheless, the Union commander unreservedly supported Eaton's work and in the process enabled the creation of one of the war's most successful contraband camps, located at Corinth, Miss. Although formally organized under the direction of General Dodge in early December 1862 and placed under the command of James M. Alexander, chaplain of the 66th Illinois, the Corinth camp likely came into existence as early as September. Initially housed in army tents no longer considered serviceable for Union troops, the freedmen were soon set to work downing trees and clearing land on which to build cabins and lay out streets, which were named for Union generals. Eventually the freedmen also built a four-room school, a commissary, a hospital, a church and an office. The entire camp was divided into wards, complete with ward masters and a police force. In late 1862 the American Missionary Association sent its first volunteers to Corinth to help care for, educate and minister to the freedmen. In a memoir written years after the war, one such missionary recalled her experience. "When brought face to face with the slaves," she wrote, "it was like the discovery of a new race." The men and women who came to Corinth generally shared a paternalistic optimism and viewed the freedmen as childlike in their enthusiasm for both education and salvation. The freedmen's thirst for knowledge was undeniable. "You will find them every hour of daylight, at their books," observed the Rev. Edward Pierce in March of 1863. We cannot enter a cabin, or tent, but that we see from one to three with books. Within no time Pierce and his wife had more than 150 students, and by the end of the summer, the addition of more missionaries enabled the school to accommodate between 300 and 400 children as well as 60 adults at a night school. In August, one of the teachers estimated that as many as 1,000 freedmen had learned to read in the Corinth camp. Organized religion followed closely on the heels of formal education. Reverend Olds "saw an earnestness in reference to the Christian life that I have seldom seen. And as I saw their deep earnestness & heard their hearty responses," he said, "I was led to ask where can we find a more impressible people than these?" The population of the camp fluctuated between 1,500 and 6,000, as large groups undertook assignments for the Union Army or contracted to work on local plantations. In March 1863, for example, the camp was home to 658 men, 1,440 women and 1,559 children. Among the men were 36 blacksmiths, 48 carpenters, 180 teamsters and 200 cooks. The female ranks included 80 seamstresses, 150 laundresses and 600 cooks. Two-thirds of the men and three-quarters of the women were married, and seven in eight women had children. According to John Eaton's records, the camp had experienced 900 cases of illness, 189 deaths and 45 births. Life at Corinth changed dramatically after a May 1863 visit by Adj. Gen. Lorenzo Thomas, who was intent on recruiting thousands of contrabands for his newly formed black regiments. With the organization of the 1st Alabama Infantry of African Descent, later renamed the 55th United States Colored Troops, the camp lost most of its able-bodied men. Their departure to fight left only the women, the young, the old and the infirm to carry on Eaton's ambitious agricultural program, which rested on the cooperative farming of large tracts of abandoned and confiscated land. The program put 400 acres under cultivation, 300 for cotton and 100 for vegetables. Each cabin also had its own subsistence garden. By May 1863, the success of the agricultural program and the presence of a multitude of skilled artisans produced a clear monthly profit of $4,000 to $5,000 for the government, as well as an admirably independent community that Eaton hoped might serve as a model for other camps. Unfortunately, the success of the Corinth camp proved short-lived. Plans for a winter campaign by Union forces in January 1864 provided a grim reminder that the fate of the freedmen was always secondary to the triumph of the Union cause. The order to relocate the camp's inhabitants 93 miles westward, to Memphis, "fell like a bomb-shell among our contented people," lamented one missionary, "but military orders are preemptory," and they "must be obeyed." The freedmen left their "well-organized village," gardens and farms to tdiv> The move from Corinth destroyed the spirit that had animated the freedmen's success. Some of the new refugees found work on confiscated plantations or in Memphis, but most lived in one of several camps surrounding the city. "The destruction of the Corinth camp," noted one historian, "was one of the tragedies of the Civil War." Eaton's plan for large-scale cooperative farming fell victim to a bitter struggle between the War and Treasury departments over the leasing of plantations and was never implemented elsewhere. And no more than one or two other camps were able to replicate the strong civilian leadership, well-planned and policed living environment, and emphasis on education that made Corinth a success. Had the government learned from the model fashioned in northern Mississippi between the fall of 1862 and early 1864, the newly freed slaves might well have enjoyed a far easier transition to life in postwar America. Sources: Joseph E. Brent, "Occupied Corinth: The Contraband Camp and the First Alabama Regiment of African Descent, 1862-1864"; John Eaton, "Grant, Lincoln, and the Freedmen; Adam Goodheart, "How Slavery Really Ended in America" The New York Times Magazine, April 1, 2011; Timothy B. Smith, "Corinth 1862: Siege, Battle, Occupation"; Cam Walker, "Corinth: The Story of a Contraband Camp."