swelled to a flood, and anxious army officers kept inquiring:
"What must be done with slaves, arriving almost daily? Are
we to find food and shelter for women and children?"

It was a Pierce of Boston who pointed out the way, and
thus became in a sense the founder of the Freedmen's Bureau.
He was a firm friend of Secretary Chase; and when, in 1861,
the care of slaves and abandoned lands devolved upon the
Treasury officials, Pierce was specially detailed from the
ranks to study the conditions. First, he cared for the refugees
at Fortress Monroe; and then, after Sherman had captured
Hilton Head, Pierce was sent there to found his Port Royal
experiment of making free workingmen out of slaves. Before
his experiment was barely started, however, the problem of
the fugitives had assumed such proportions that it was taken
from the hands of the over-burdened Treasury Department
and given to the army officials. Already centres of massed
freedmen were forming at Fortress Monroe, Washington,
New Orleans, Vicksburg and Corinth, Columbus, Ky., and
Cairo, Ill., as well as at Port Royal. Army chaplains found
here new and fruitful fields; "superintendents of contrabands"
multiplied, and some attempt at systematic work was made
by enlisting the able-bodied men and giving work to the
others.

Then came the Freedmen's Aid societies, 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