Already centres of massed
freedmen were forming at Fortress Monroe, Washington,
New Orleans, Vicksburg and Corinth, Columbus, Ky., and
Cairo, Ill., as well as at Port Royal. Army chaplains found
here new and fruitful fields; "superintendents of contrabands"
multiplied, and some attempt at systematic work was made
by enlisting the able-bodied men and giving work to the
others.
Then came the Freedmen's Aid societies, born of the
touching appeals from Pierce and from these other centres of
distress. There was the American Missionary Association,
sprung from the Amistad, and now full-grown for work; the
various church organizations, the National Freedmen's Relief
Association, the American Freedmen's Union, the Western
Freedmen's Aid Commission,--in all fifty or more active
organizations, which sent clothes, money, school-books, and
teachers southward. All they did was needed, for the destitution
of the freedmen was often reported as "too appalling for
belief," and the situation was daily growing worse rather
than better.
And daily, too, it seemed more plain that this was no
ordinary matter of temporary relief, but a national crisis; for
here loomed a labor problem of vast dimensions.
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