[donmeaker]

The contrabands were given the opportunity to work at 50 cents a day.

Back when gold was 16 dollars to the ounce, that would be 1/32 of an ounce of gold or roughly 50 dollars a day, perhaps 5 dollars an hour.

[BroJoeK]

SeeSharp: "So why did thousands of them die?
And why were they put to work as slaves by the Union Army?
Grant may have been generous as he was passing through, but Butler, who set up the program, certainly was not. "

donmeaker: "The contrabands were given the opportunity to work at 50 cents a day.
Back when gold was 16 dollars to the ounce, that would be 1/32 of an ounce of gold or roughly 50 dollars a day, perhaps 5 dollars an hour."

For more details on this subject:

"Prior to the War, the owners of the slaves would have been legally entitled to request their return (as property) and likely would have done so under the federal 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.
But, Virginia had declared (by secession) that it no longer was part of the United States.
General Butler, who was educated as an attorney, took the position that, if Virginia considered itself a foreign power to the U.S., then he was under no obligation to return the three men; he would hold them as "contraband of war."
When Confederate Major John B. Cary requested their return, Butler refused the request.
Because the practice effectively recognized the seceded states as foreign entities, President Abraham Lincoln disapproved of it.

"Gen. Butler did not pay the escaped slaves wages for work that they began to undertake, and he continued to refer to them as slaves.

"On September 25, 1861, the Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles issued a directive to give 'persons of color, commonly known as contrabands', in the employment of the Union Navy pay at the rate of $10 per month and a full day's ration.[1]
Three weeks later, the Union Army followed suit, paying male "contrabands" at Fort Monroe $8 a month and females $4, and specific to that command.[2]

"In August, the US Congress passed the Confiscation Act of 1861, which declared that any property used by the Confederate military, including slaves, could be confiscated by Union forces.
The next March, its Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves forbade returning slaves to Confederate masters or the military."

The pay of $10 per month in today's values is about $1,800 plus a "full ration" worth, what, maybe $25 today = another $760 per month.
Then there were government provided quarters, doubtless not palaces, but equivalent to Union soldiers' quarters and certainly equal to those the escaped slaves left behind.
Maybe $250 in today's values.

So we're looking at economic compensations equivalent to circa $2,800 per month or $33,600 per year in today's values.

Finally, regarding alleged "concentration camps", where supposedly "thousands died" -- first, cite a source and second, remember those escaped slaves were always free to return to their former masters.

During the war, how many did?