But the greatness of their number appalled us. During the war nearly forty thousand entered our gates. To care adequately and discriminatingly for such a multitude, many of whom, as we have already seen, were densely ignorant and averse to honest toil, was a task too vast for a city of not more than a hundred and fifty-two thousand inhabitants. So in this, as in every great need engendered by the war, the Federal government, through its military officers, lent a strong, helping hand; while the Sanitary Commission, whose work we propose to set forth in a subsequent chapter, took a leading part in this great and urgent charity. Through this triune agency, among many projects inaugurated to meet the wants of the refugees, a six-story building, the precursor of several others of like character, was fitted up for their accommodation. Into it a thousand of them were put. Here they were not simply lodged and fed, but were taught to read and write. They were also set at various kinds of manual labor, and while this to many of them was the bitterest ingredient in their cup, it helped pay their way, and gave them truer and higher ideas of work. And in all our manifold efforts on their behalf, we endeavored not simply to feed and clothe them, but also to meet their higher needs, to develop their minds and elevate their morals. But the presentation of our experiences with the refugees would not be complete without at least a brief survey of the freedmen or fugitives from bondage. After General Benjamin F. Butler, in 1861, had felicitously decided that slaves captured by his troops, or fleeing into his lines, were contraband of war, and so justly subject to confiscation, throughout the North they were generally designated contrabands, and they usually bore that name among us. While from first to last a multitude of them of various shades of color fled to our city, they were by no means as numerous as the white refugees; and while they were all illiterate, having been inured to labor they were usually ready to engage in any menial service. Those who had been trained in household work were at once employed by the best families of the city; while many field hands, that came to us in the winter, had to be cared for by the government and by private charity, until spring, when most of them found remunerative work in cleaning up yards, cultivating gardens, and on farms outside the city. Only a small contingent remained to tax our benevolence. Some of these were spiritless and thriftless; and some were crippled or sick. However, since the contrabands, taken as a whole, were ready to work, and were greatly delighted, for the first time in their lives, to work for wages, the problem of caring for them was comparatively an easy one.