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 NEGRO.

(Maps 3 and 4, Bulletin 129, U.S.  Bureau of the Census.)

(Maps 5 and 6, Bulletin 129, U.S.  Bureau of the Census.)]

In some of these camps, and especially in those of the West, the refugees were finally sent out to other sections in need of labor, as in the cases of the contrabands assembled with the Union army at first at Grand Junction and later at Memphis.[17]

There were three types of these camp communities which attracted attention as places for free labor experimentation.  These were at Port Royal, on the Mississippi in the neighborhood of Vicksburg, and in Lower Louisiana and Virginia.  The first trial of free labor of blacks on a large scale in a slave State was made in Port Royal.[18] The experiment was generally successful.  By industry, thrift and orderly conduct the Negroes showed their appreciation for their new opportunities.  In the Mississippi section invaded by the northern army, General Thomas opened what he called Infirmary Farms which he leased to Negroes on certain terms which they usually met successfully.  The same plan, however, was not so successful in the Lower Mississippi section.[19] The failure in this section was doubtless due to the inferior type of blacks in the lower cotton belt where Negroes had been more brutalized by slavery.