Maybe you’ve seen some of the alarming historical accounts proliferating across the internet. Over a hundred thousand “contrabands” (runaway slaves) seeking freedom in Natchez during the Civil War.

Instead, to be held by force by the Union army in a “concentration camp” in the Devil’s Punchbowl in which 20,000 died. “Self-emancipated” slaves begging for de-emancipation, for a rescue from the storm of freedom and a return to the shelter of slavery.   

Sensational? You bet. But true?

Let’s return to first principles — as with any information, always consider the source. None are perfect, but some are infinitely better than others. The origin for the “concentration camp” reports seems to be one “Mystery Monday” segment aired a while ago on WJTV, Channel 12 News, of Jackson.

The first “researcher” cited for the story is a woman from the “Delta Paranormal Project.” I think our source-consideration is complete. Yes, for this history lesson, WJTV called Ghostbusters.

As journalism, whether “soft” or “hard,” this is a disgrace. Particularly since there is a readily available scholarly source — Professor Ron Davis’ The Black Experience in Natchez (1994), which is on sale at the National Park Service bookshop here in Natchez. And, while dispensing with melodramatic nonsense, Davis does not mince words about the human tragedy that really did unfold in the Natchez contraband camp.

First of all, it was established Under-the-Hill, north of Learned’s Mill, but south of the “punchbowls.”

And in broader context, this needs to be understood as a refugee camp, not a concentration camp (with all that is implied by that term).

Throughout history those fleeing war and oppression have been channeled into makeshift sites providing inadequate shelter and wretched sanitation. As a result, from ancient times to recent times, refugee camps have frequently been incubators for epidemic disease.

And so it was in Natchez. Davis says that the “tidal wave” of contrabands who began arriving in July 1863 were placed in a camp that was “poorly equipped, undermanned, and overwhelmed by sickness and racism” (there was plenty of that among northerners, too, after all). As to numbers, not 120,000 but 4,000 entered the camp that summer.

As to fatalities, not 20,000 but 2,000 had died by October. The story is genuinely heart-rending, but calling this a “concentration camp,” and multiplying the fatalities by 10 to add zing to a breezy human-interest story is an insult to the actual victims. Also, by 1864, conditions improved, as other less deadly camps, both official and unofficial, were set up elsewhere in the Natchez vicinity.

This story, though, is both tragedy and triumph. Most of the United States Colored Troops (USCT) who manned Fort McPherson here in Natchez were recruited from these contraband/refugee camps. And these men were not begging for re-enslavement.

After emancipating themselves from slavery, they were required to do the truly hard labor of digging earthworks, but also, they fought for the emancipation of others. Because by 1863, the war had become an abolitionist war. Those “others” to be emancipated included, as we have seen, the non-slaveholding southern majority — white men, even if fighting for the Confederacy, who were lesser victims of the system of slavery which they were self-destructively defending. 

In this era in which so many learn their “mainstream history” from the History Channel — that Scarlet Whore of Cable TV, indiscriminately airing documented truths one hour and pyramid-building space alien fantasies the next — we need fewer Mystery Mondays and more Factual Wednesdays. Real history, which is defined by its real sources, is sensational enough.

JIM WIGGINS is a retired Copiah-Lincoln Community College history instructor.