iers did
not understand that they were fighting to free Negroes. The condition in
which they were on arriving, moreover, was a new problem for the army.
Some came naked, some in decrepitude, some afflicted with disease, and
some wounded in their efforts to escape.[9] There were "women in travail,
the helplessness of childhood and of old age, the horrors of sickness and
of frequent deaths."[10] In their crude state few of them had any
conception of the significance of liberty, thinking that it meant idleness
and freedom from restraint. In consequence of this ignorance there
developed such undesirable habits as deceit, theft and licentiousness to
aggravate the afflictions of nakedness, famine and disease.[11]

In the East large numbers of these refugees were concentrated at
Washington, Alexandria, Fortress Monroe, Hampton, Craney Island and Fort
Norfolk. There were smaller groups of them at Yorktown, Suffolk and
Portsmouth.[12]

[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE PER CENT OF NEGROES IN TOTAL POPULATION, BY
STATES: 1910.

(Map 2, Bulletin 129, The United States Bureau of the Census.)]

Some of them were conducted from these camps into York, Columbia,
Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and by water to New York and
Boston, from which they went to various parts seeking labor. Some
collected in groups as in the case of those at Five Points in New
York.[13] Large numbers of them from Virginia assembled in Washington in
1862 in Duff Green's Row on Capitol Hill where they were organized as a
camp, out of which came a contraband school, after being moved to the
McClellan Barracks.[14] Then there was in the District of Columbia another
group known as Freedmen's village on Arlington Heights. It was said that,
in 1864, 30,000 to 40,000 Negroes had come from the plantations to the
District of Columbia.[15] It happened here too as in most cases of this
migration that the Negroes were on hand before the officials grappling
with many other problems could determine exactly what could or should be
done with them. The camps near Washington fortunately became centers for
the employment of contrabands in the city. Those repairing to Fortress
Monroe were distributed as laborers among the farmers of that
vicinity.[16]

[Illustration: DIAGRAM SHOWING THE NEGRO POPULATION OF NORTHERN AND
WESTERN CITIES IN 1900 AND THE EXTENT TO WHICH IT INCREASED BY 1910.

COUNTIES IN THE SOUTHERN STATES HAVING AT LEAST 50 PER CENT OF THEIR
POPULATION NE