for wages and rations and appropriated to the support of the unemployed a
portion of the earnings of the laborers. This policy was followed by
General Wood, Butler's successor, and by General Banks in New Orleans.

An elaborate plan for handling such fugitives was carried out by E.S.
Pierce and General Rufus Saxton at Port Royal, South Carolina. Seeing the
situation in another light, however, General Halleck in charge in the West
excluded slaves from the Union lines, at first, as did General Dix in
Virginia. But Halleck, in his instructions to General McCullum, February,
1862, ordered him to put contrabands to work to pay for food and
clothing.[5] Other commanders, like General McCook and General Johnson,
permitted the slave hunters to enter their lines and take their slaves
upon identification,[6] ignoring the confiscation act of August, 1861,
which was construed by some as justifying the retention of such refugees.
Officers of a different attitude, however, soon began to protest against
the returning of fugitive slaves. General Grant, also, while admitting the
binding force of General Halleck's order, refused to grant permits to
those in search of fugitives seeking asylum within his lines and at the
capture of Fort Donelson ordered the retention of all blacks who had been
used by the Confederates in building fortifications.[7]

Lincoln finally urged the necessity for withholding fugitive slaves from
the enemy, believing that there could be in it no danger of servile
insurrection and that the Confederacy would thereby be weakened.[8] As
this opinion soon developed into a conviction that official action was
necessary, Congress, by Act of March 13, 1862, provided that slaves be
protected against the claims of their pursuers. Continuing further in this
direction, the Federal Government gradually reached the position of
withdrawing Negro labor from the Confederate territory. Finally the United
States Government adopted the policy of withholding from the Confederates,
slaves received with the understanding that their masters were in
rebellion against the United States. With this as a settled policy then,
the United States Government had to work out some scheme for the remaking
of these fugitives coming into its camps.

In some of these cases the fugitives found themselves among men more
hostile to them than their masters were, for many of the Union soldiers of
the border States were slaveholders themselves and northern sold