use of them as fatigue men in the department of the surgeon-general, the quartermaster and the commissary.  He believed then that such Negroes as did well in these more humble positions should be made citizens and soldiers.[24] As a matter of fact out of this very suggestion came the policy of arming the Negroes, the first regiment of whom was recruited under orders issued by General Hunter at Port Royal, South Carolina in 1862.  As the arming of the slave to participate in this war did not generally please the white people who considered the struggle a war between civilized groups, this policy could not offer general relief to the congested contraband camps.[25]

A better system of handling the fugitives was finally worked out, however, with a general superintendent at the head of each department, supported by a number of competent assistants.  More explicit instructions were given as to the manner of dealing with the situation.  It was to be the duty of the superintendent of contrabands, says the order, to organize them into working parties in saving the cotton, as pioneers on railroads and steamboats, and in any way where their services could be made available.  Where labor was performed for private individuals they were charged in accordance with the orders of the commander of the department.  In case they were directed to save abandoned crops of cotton for the benefit of the United States Government, the officer selling such crops would turn over to the superintendent of contrabands the proceeds of the sale, which together with other earnings were used for clothing and feeding the Negroes.  Clothing sent by philanthropic persons to these camps was received and distributed by the superintendent.  In no case, however, were Negroes to be forced into the service of the United States Government or to be enticed away from their homes except when it became a military necessity.[26]

Some order out of the chaos eventually developed, for as John Eaton, one of the workers in the West, reported:  “There was no promiscuous intermingling.  Families were established by themselves.  Every man took care of his own wife and children.”  “One of the most touching features of our Work,” says he, “was the eagerness with which colored men and women availed themselves of the opportunities offered them to legalize unions already formed, some of which had been in existence for a long time."[27] “Chaplain A.S.  Fiske on one occasion married in about an hour one hundred and nineteen couples at one service, chiefly those who had long lived together.”  Letters from the Virginia camps and from those of Port Royal indicate that this favorable condition generally obtained.[28]