5 THE FREEDMEN’S SAVINGS BANK 
roe in 1861, set the example of confiscating cap- 
tive slaves and organizing them to work for their 
own support. When Port Royal was captured 
by the Federals in 1862 the Negroes of the Sea 
Islands were organized under agents sent from 
the North by the United States Treasury De- 
partment. For three years, under a system re- 
sembling benevolent serfdom, these agents 
trained the Negroes for the responsibilities of 
freedom. And elsewhere along the Atlantic coast 
where the Federals secured a hold, colonies of 
refugees were thus organized to work for their 
own living. The lands, houses, and movable prop- 
erty of the Confederates were used for the bene- 
fit of the refugee slaves who, by the end of the 
war, had begun to work without supervision and 
in some cases had purchased property. 
A similar policy was pursued by the command- 
ers in the Southwest. After the fall of Vicksburg 
and Port Hudson the Negroes near the Missis- 
sippi River from Cairo, Illinois, to New Orleans 
passed under the control of the Federal armies, 
whose commanders, in order to lessen suffering 
and prevent starvation, gathered them into 
camps or colonies near the military garrisons. 
Officers of the army, usually chaplains, were de- 
tailed to look after Negro affairs, to collect the 
homeless ones into these colonies, to provide for 
the distribution of supplies and for medical at- 
tention to the sick. General Grant had begun 
this policy in 1862 when he set all the Negroes 
near his army in West Tennessee to picking cot- 
ton and gathering corn in the deserted fields. 
Chaplain John Eaton supervised this work and 
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