eties, born of the touching appeals
from Pierce and from these other centres of distress. There was the
American Missionary Association, sprung from the Amistad, and now
full-grown for work; the various church organizations, the National
Freedmen's Relief Association, the American Freedmen's Union, the
Western Freedmen's Aid Commission,--in all fifty or more active
organizations, which sent clothes, money, school-books, and teachers
southward. All they did was needed, for the destitution of the
freedmen was often reported as "too appalling for belief," and the
situation was daily growing worse rather than better.

And daily, too, it seemed more plain that this was no ordinary matter
of temporary relief, but a national crisis; for here loomed a labor
problem of vast dimensions. Masses of Negroes stood idle, or, if they
worked spasmodically, were never sure of pay; and if perchance they
received pay, squandered the new thing thoughtlessly. In these and
other ways were camp-life and the new liberty demoralizing the
freedmen. The broader economic organization thus clearly demanded
sprang up here and there as accident and local conditions determined.
Here it was that Pierce's Port Royal plan of leased plantations and
guided workmen pointed out the rough way. In Washington the military
governor, at the urgent appeal of the superintendent, opened
confiscated estates to the cultivation of the fugitives, and there in
the shadow of the dome gathered black farm villages. General Dix gave
over estates to the freedmen of Fortress Monroe, and so on, South and
West. The government and benevolent societies furnished the means of
cultivation, and the Negro turned again slowly to work. The systems of
control, thus started, rapidly grew, here and there, into strange
little governments, like that of General Banks in Louisiana, with its
ninety thousand black subjects, its fifty thousand guided laborers, and
its annual budget of one hundred thousand dollars and more. It made
out four thousand pay-rolls a year, registered all freedmen, inquired
into grievances and redressed them, laid and collected taxes, and
established a system of public schools. So, too, Colonel Eaton, the
superintendent of Tennessee and Arkansas, ruled over one hundred
thousand freedmen, leased and cultivated seven thousand acres of cotton
land, and fed ten thousand paupers a year. In South Carolina was
General Saxton, with his deep interest in black folk. He