‘HUMANITY FORBADE THEM TO STARVE’
In October 1862, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant took command of the Union Department of the Tennessee, establishing his headquarters in the village of La Grange, Tenn. Most of his 31,000 troops were stationed two miles away in the small railroad town of Grand Junction, about 45 miles south of Memphis and a few miles north of the Mississippi state line.
As Grant made plans to move farther south into the heart of plantation country, his principal focus was on the capture of Vicksburg, Miss., which would give the Union control of the Mississippi River—a major goal of the Lincoln administration since the beginning of the war. Grant, however, also faced the tormenting question of how to care for tens of thousands of former slaves who had begun steadily arriving within Union lines that fall. The U.S. government referred to these refugees as “contrabands of war,” or simply “contrabands,” essentially considering them captured enemy property.
“The arrival among us of these hordes was the oncoming of cities,” wrote the Rev. John Eaton, chaplain of the 27th Ohio Infantry. “There was no plan to this exodus, no Moses to lead it.…Their condition was appalling. There were men, women, and children in every stage of disease or decrepitude, often nearly naked, with flesh torn by the
