Online posts and articles suggest that a place named the Devil's Punchbowl in Natchez, Mississippi, was "a concentration camp … established by Union soldiers to eradicate the slaves" during the Civil War. Some sources allege that "over 20,000 freed slaves were killed in one year in this American concentration camp" and that what transpired there was "so horrific [the camp] was erased from history."
An example of such a post (archived) on social media was shared to X on Feb. 26, 2025, and read, in part:
The Devil's Punchbowl in Natchez, Mississippi, was a Civil War-era death camp. After the Civil War millions of freed Black people were funneled into concentration camps.
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Disease started spreading, people were starving, and thousands—especially women and kids—died slow, painful deaths. Their bodies were left to rot, and the land is still untouched to this day because their remains are literally in the soil. Mass graves still hide under the town's peach orchards.
At the time of this publication, the post had received more than 213,000 views.
While it's true that Natchez was the site of Union Army work camps that housed freed slaves — often under dangerously overcrowded and unsanitary conditions — they were built as refugee settlements, not "death camps." Roscoe Barnes and Mallory Meng of the Natchez Tourism Center told Snopes that "no such thing [took] place at The Devil's Punchbowl."
"The Union Army did not operate a concentration camp, although the conditions were not much better," Mimi Miller, executive director emerita of the Historic Natchez Foundation, has written. "The army was overwhelmed by the number of African American refugees that left the plantations and fled into the city and was ill prepared to care for them."
Many of the social media posts referenced blogs that routinely share copypasta — identical bits of text copied and pasted from one source to the next without verification. Such posts often spread misinformation. Some of these blogs cited Don Estes, retired director of the Natchez City Cemetery, who is described as having "conducted extensive research into individuals buried at the cemetery" and who wrote a book titled "Legends of the Natchez City Cemetery: The Most Interesting Cemetery in the South." Notably, the book is described as containing "fictions, legends and lore" along with facts.
The bottom photo in the X post above, which shows a sign that reads "Devil's Punchbowl Scientific Study Area," is an example of the kind of false information that regularly turns up in these poorly researched posts. The photo wasn't taken in Natchez, Mississippi, or anywhere near that location. Rather, it shows the site of a nature preserve in Menomonie, Wisconsin, that just happens to share the name "Devil's Punchbowl."
For a more accurate overview of what took place in the Devil's Punchbowl in Natchez, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History referred Snopes to a statement written by Miller.
Miller wrote that popular accounts of the Devil's Punchbowl "are both fact and fiction" and seem to have originated in a "Jackson, MS, television show on paranormal activity in Natchez." These "largely untrue" stories describe a supposed Union Army "concentration camp" for newly freed Black people previously enslaved.
According to Miller:
The truth is that the Union Army constructed barracks, designated as "Contraband Barracks," to house newly freed African Americans who were described as "contraband" by the Union Army all across the South. These newly freed African Americans fled the plantation countryside for the City of Natchez after it was occupied by the Union Army in July 1863. The army was overwhelmed by the number of African American refugees that left the plantations and fled into the city and was ill prepared to care for them. The Union Army responded by building barracks, identified as the "contraband barracks" and sometimes as the "corral" by local folks.
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When the Union Army occupied Natchez in July 1864, they urged newly freed African Americans to return to the plantations and to try to forge new relationships with their former owners. The Union Army controlled movement into and out of the contraband barracks and controlled entry into the city limits of Natchez, which was then only about a mile square and overwhelmed by refugees.
The Union Army did not operate a concentration camp, although the conditions were not much better. As a consequence, a good many of these newly freed people encountered disease and death in the overcrowded contraband barracks from poor sanitation and drinking river water—conditions that also took the lives of Union soldiers. African Americans who enlisted in the Union Army lived in barracks inside Fort McPherson and possibly in the army barracks on the riverfront. Casualties among black Union soldiers were particularly high and most deaths were related to disease. White Union soldiers were not immune but a much smaller percentage of them died.
(Image courtesy of Visit Natchez)
Miller said the earliest local reference she found to a "Punch Bowl" in Natchez was an article in the Natchez Gazette from Oct. 21, 1826, decades before occupation by the Union Army. She emailed examples of these articles describing
About a mile above Natchez, and just where the swamps begins to widen out, there are three remarkable chasm, in diameter about five hundred yards; embraced by the North, East and South by a perpendicular elevation of two hundred feet, and opening towards the West into the river swamps, with which its floor is upon a level. The top of the precipice which encloses these remarkable cavities (commonly called the "Devil's Punch Bowls") is a part of the general chain of highland which I have heretofore described.
Below is a compilation of those scanned articles:
(Images courtesy of Visit Natchez)
According to Miller, Natchez had three formations that would have been described as "punch bowls," and the largest section of the "contraband barracks" was built between two of them.
Below is a copy of the 1864 Union Army map of Natchez and a detailed illustration of the largest section of the "contraband barracks."
(Image courtesy of Visit Natchez)
A description of similar barracks upriver from Natchez was published on Page 8 of the Natchez newspaper The Weekly Democrat on Sept. 7, 1887, in an article titled "Slaves of the South: Suffering Which War Brought to Many of Them." The author, whose name is not included, wrote of anchoring in the Yazoo River in January 1863 and coming across the settlement:
I saw them, after they reached their promised land. Crowded in filthy barracks, starving on damaged pork and moldy hard tack, swarming with vermin, rotting with small-pox and scurvy, they are even past pity. In contemplating their misery one could only feel horror and amazement that such wretchedness could continue to exist. To very many blacks the war was a rightful disaster.
Two historical books, "The Black Experience in Natchez" by Ronald Davis and "The Diary of Bishop William" by Henry Elder, also describe the barracks.
Davis described labor refugee camps in his 1993 publication beginning on Page 148:
In the months following July of 1863, Federal officials in the Mississippi River Valley launched an experiment in wage labor for "contraband" blacks that tossed thousands of district workers back-and-forth among competing agencies in ways that put a serious blight upon the first days of freedom. Initially, from the summer of 1862 to 1863, the Union's refugee program in the Mississippi Valley, directed by Col. John Eaton, a chaplain in the Fifth Regiment of Grant's army, was little more than an attempt to organize refugee slaves into work companies to pick, gin, and bale ungathered cotton on abandoned plantations. Proceeds from the cotton would pay for the rations consumed by the refugees. Once the cotton was picked, the plan called for employing the refugees as woodchoppers and in general fatigue labor for the army at Union camps in order to free white soldiers for fighting.
Blacks were required to sign contracts wherein they agreed to labor under the direction of army officers for fixed wages set at subsistence levels. All earnings were to be channeled into a general fund supporting the entire refugee camp or else paid out in food and clothing rations on an individual basis. The conditions of work were similar to those in slavery – gang labor, overseers, and limited movement – except that chains and whips were essentially eliminated as methods of discipline.
Soon, the program was "simply overwhelmed" by refugees "flocking to Union lines," prompting the Union Army to "organize a full scale refugee program" in the region. These so-called "contraband camps" were common in the region and often involved officials running plantations with the labor of formerly enslaved people. Davis added:
Although flogging was forbidden by the new policy, disobedience, insolence and poor performance would result in lost wages; or else problem workers would be turned over to the provost marshal for labor on public works without pay. District blacks … were thus expected to work much as they had in slavery because they were still a "people identified with the cultivation of the soil, however changed in condition by the revolution through which [they were] passing."
Elder's account in his 19th-century diaries described formerly enslaved persons on Page 59, writing in August 1863:
After dinner I sent Revd. Mr. Finucane to the Negro camp or corral as it is called, to see what has to be done for the souls of the poor people especially the dying, infants & others.
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Went down … to the Negro camp on the old Cotton Press grounds, back to the hills. Met three or four gangs of Negro men marching under white officers - probably going to work. Negro sentinels at the gate. There seem to be some thousands. They have made shelters of boards - forming rows of rough cabins, with plank roofs. The roof generally very low. Sometimes high enough: generally floored.