It was easier to raise and train these negro soldiers than to arrange for the control, shelter, and employment of the other refugees who crowded especially to the protection of Grant’s army in the West. The efforts made for their benefit cannot be related here, but the recollections of Army Chaplain John Eaton, whom Grant selected to take charge of them in the West, throw a little more light on Lincoln and on the spirit of his dealing with “the nigger question.” When Eaton after some time had to come to Washington, upon the business of his charge and to visit the President, he received that impression, of versatile power and of easy mastery over many details as well as over broad issues, which many who worked under Lincoln have described, but he was above all struck with the fact that from a very slight experience in early life Lincoln had gained a knowledge of negro character such as very few indeed in the North possessed. He was subjected to many seemingly trivial questions, of which he was quick enough to see the grave purpose, about all sorts of persons and things in the West, but he was also examined closely, in a way which commanded his fullest respect as an expert, about the ideas, understanding, and expectations of the ordinary negroes under his care, and more particularly as to the past history and the attainments of the few negroes who had become prominent men, and who therefore best illustrated the real capacities of their race. Later visits to the capital and to Lincoln deepened this impression, and convinced Eaton, though by trifling signs, of the rare quality of Lincoln’s sympathy. Once, after Eaton’s difficult business had been disposed of, the President turned to relating his own recent worries about a colony of negroes which he was trying to establish on a small island off Hayti. There flourishes in Southern latitudes a minute creature called Dermatophilus