CORINTH CONTRABAND CAMP

During the war of Secession, many slaves fleeing the plantations and farms of the South found refuge with the Union forces occupying Corinth. The Grenville Dodge Unionist began to employ fugitives as truckers, cooks, domestic, blanchisseuses and many other tasks. Very quickly he was loading male refugees to give them custody of the camp created for the occasion. When President Lincoln allowed the creation of black units, much of the same refugees formed the 1 ^st Infantry Regiment of Alabama, composed of about 1 000 African Americans.

Corinth camp operated from November 1862 to December 1863, under the direction of Chaplain James M. Alexander. An estimated 1 500 to 6 000 people were living here during this period. Better equipped than many other camps of the same type, Contraband Camp looked like a small town with a police station, a hospital, a school, a church, and wooden houses in named and numbered streets. Life was not an idyllic life, and many of the camp occupants were suffering from disease. A number of them died as well. At the end of 1863, the camp was moved around Memphis.

Today, part of the land occupied by the camp has been preserved. It's a small park in which the bronze figures scattered along the loop trail depict the lives of those called "smugglers" of war. The value of the place lies above all in its past and has no tourist attraction for whom not particularly interested in history.