In some cases, these refugees experienced many hardships.  It was charged that they were worked hard, badly treated and deprived of all their wages except what was given them for rations and a scanty pittance, wholly insufficient to purchase necessary clothing and provide for their families.[20] Not a few of the refugees for these reasons applied for permission to return to their masters and sometimes such permission was granted; for, although under military authority, they were by order of Congress to be considered as freemen.  These voluntary slaves, of course, were few and the authorities were not thereby impressed with the thought that Negroes would prefer to be slaves, should they be treated as freemen rather than as brutes.[21]

It became increasingly difficult, however, to handle this problem.  In the first place, it was not an easy matter to find soldiers well disposed to serve the Negroes in any manner whatever and the officers of the army had no desire to force them to render such services since those thus engaged suffered a sort of social ostracism.  The same condition obtained in the case of caring for those afflicted with disease, until there was issued a specific regulation placing the contraband sick in charge of the army surgeons.[22] What the situation in the Mississippi Valley was during these months has been well described by an observer, saying:  “I hope I may never be called on again to witness the horrible scenes I saw in those first days of history of the freedmen in the Mississippi Valley.  Assistants were hard to find, especially the kind that would do any good in the camps.  A detailed soldier in each camp of a thousand people was the best that could be done and his duties were so onerous that he ended by doing nothing.  In reviewing the condition of the people at that time, I am not surprised at the marvelous stories told by visitors who caught an occasional glimpse of the misery and wretchedness in these camps.  Our efforts to do anything for these people, as they herded together in masses, when founded on any expectation that they would help themselves, often failed; they had become so completely broken down in spirit, through suffering, that it was almost impossible to arouse them."[23]

A few sympathetic officers and especially the chaplains undertook to relieve the urgent cases of distress.  They could do little, however, to handle all the problems of the unusual situation until they engaged the attention of the higher officers of the army and the federal functionaries in Washington.  After some delay this was finally done and special officers were detailed to take charge of the contrabands.  The Negroes were assembled in camps and employed according to instructions from the Secretary of War as teamsters, laborers and the like on forts and railroads.  Some were put to picking, ginning, baling and removing cotton on plantations abandoned by their masters.  General Grant, as early as 1862, was making further