Corinth: The Story of a Contraband Camp

CORINTH: The Story of a Contraband Camp Cam Walker Luce many other small, southern towns Corinth, Mississippi, achieved a measure of fame during the Civil War. To the Union and Confederate armies it was a strategic rail center, the site of a sharply fought engagement . To a multitude of ex-slaves it was an important way station between bondage and freedom. Situated at the junction of the Memphis and Charleston and the Mobile and Ohio Railroads in the northeast corner of the state, Corinth first fell into Union hands in May, 1862, when General P. G. T. Beauregard withdrew to the south. In early October, 1862, the northerners repulsed a two day Confederate attack and thereby assured continued Union control of western Tennessee and northern Mississippi. The battle of Corinth was bloody; it claimed hundreds of lives. But Corinth was a birthplace as well as a burial ground—a birthplace of freedom for thousands of blacks. For more than a year, from late 1862 to early 1864, the contraband camp at Corinth provided the first taste of non-slave life for men, women, and children who had fled the plantations of Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama. The history of the battle of Corinth is familiar; the story of the Corinth contraband camp is not.1 Military records are readily available, reports and accounts of the camp fugitive. Yet an examination of the freedmen's experiences at Corinth reveals more about the ultimate impact of the war than do a dozen military studies. Some understanding of the process by which a whole people moved from slavery to freedom, some idea of the obstacles encountered and hardships endured, some sense of their hopes for the future all emerge from such an examination. The Corinth story also makes clear the assumptions, prejudices, and ideals of the white men and women who worked with the blacks during this transitional period. Finally, the problems and fate of the camp illustrate in microcosm the difficulties and shortcomings of the wartime work with the freedmen. Two caveats must be entered. First, all the sources for this study are white; the blacks at Corinth were largely "inarticulate." Second, the camp at Corinth was not typical. Considered a "model" camp by all who saw it, Corinth was superior to most other camps in organization, 1 There is no study of the contraband camps in the western theater comparable to Willie Lee Rose's excellent account of the Port Royal, S.C., experiment, Rehearsal for Reconstruction (Indianapolis, 1964). 6 CIVIL WAR HISTORY personnel, and facilities. Despite these limitations, much can be learned from the brief history of Corinth. The origins of the freedmen's camp at Corinth are obscure. Accounts conflict. John Eaton, the young chaplain whom General Grant chose to "take charge" of the hordes of blacks seeking refuge within Union lines, records that the camp was organized in November, 1862, a few days after he began his work with the freedmen.2 Other sources indicate that General Grenville M. Dodge, commander of the Corinth district, actually authorized the camp several weeks earlier. Dodge, like most of the Union commanders in the upper Mississippi Valley, worried about the ever-increasing flood of runaway slaves. He feared they would disrupt his camps and demoralize his men. In September, 1862, he complained that Lincoln's preliminary emancipation proclamation encouraged the Negroes to desert the plantations. "They will not even wait until 1st January," he wrote on September 15. "I do not know what we shall do with them; . . ."3 Apparently he decided to establish a separate camp for them, even though the War Department had not yet sanctioned such a solution. Exactly when the camp opened is unclear, but the service record of the first superintendent, Chaplain James M. Alexander of the 66th Illinois Volunteers, states that he was absent from his regular regiment in September and October, 1862, because of his work with the freedmen at Corinth.4 On November 6, several days before Eaton entered the picture, General Grant allowed Dodge to send the Reverend Joel Grant, chaplain of the 12th Illinois Infantry, north to solicit aid and collect clothing for the blacks.5 Thus the Corinth camp seems to...