In some cases, as in Lawrence, Kansas, there were assembled enough freedmen to constitute a distinct group.[32] Speaking of this settlement the editor of the _Alton Telegraph_ said in 1862 that although they amounted to many hundreds not one, that he could learn of, had been a public charge.

They readily found employment at fair wages, and soon made themselves comfortable.[33] There was a little apprehension that the North would be overrun by such blacks.

Some had no such fear, however, for the reason that the census did not indicate such a movement.

Many slaves were freed in the North prior to 1860, yet with all the emigration from the slave States to the North there were then in all the Northern States but 226,152 free blacks, while there were in the slave States 261,918, an excess of 35,766 in the slave States.
Frederick Starr believed that during the Civil War there might be an influx for a few months but it would not continue.[34] They would return when sure that they would be free.

Starr thought that, if necessary, these refugees might be used in building the much desired Pacific Railroad to divert them from the North.
There was little ground for this apprehension, in fact, if their readjustment and development in the contraband camps could be considered an indication of what the Negroes would eventually do.