what was the port royal experiment quizlet

The Port Royal Experiment – Setting the Stage for Reconstruction, Part One

by Ashley Webb

Posted on May 29, 2015

In late October of 1861, the Union Naval fleet set sail for Port Royal, South Carolina, hoping to advance Winfield Scott’s plan to blockade the Confederate ports and prevent trade with European countries. Similar to the Chesapeake Bay, Port Royal was a strategic supply route into South Carolina and Georgia, as well as one of the wealthiest Confederate ports because of its sea-islands cotton. The brief naval battle at Port Royal that took place in November 1861 unsettled the Confederate hold on the islands, and led to a hasty retreat for both the Confederate troops and the plantation owners, abandoning all property and possessions. The question soon became about what to do with the 10,000 slaves left behind. Through the efforts of Edward Pierce, Laura Towne, Charlotte Forten, and other Northern missionaries, the initial model used to reintegrate a large African Americans population into society at Port Royal served as the national example for Reconstruction prior to Lincoln’s death.

Soon after the Union gained control over the Sea Islands, slaves from surrounding plantations flocked to Beaufort and Port Royal, looking for their freedom. Several months prior, General Butler at Fort Monroe in Virginia, declared the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 null and void in the Union, resolving that all “property of traitors is…forfeit,” after three slaves escaped to the fort in the cover of night. [i] This progressive decision set the stage for a larger movement of slaves migrating toward the North throughout the rest of the war.

The U.S. Treasurer assigned Edward Pierce, who had worked with the contraband at Fort Monroe, to “visit this district for the purpose of reporting upon the condition of the negroes who had been abandoned by the white population, and [to] suggest some plan for the organization of their labor and the promotion of their general well-being.” [ii] In his initial report, Pierce surveyed 200 plantations within a 15 island radius, counting between 8,000 and 10,000 abandoned slaves. His task was two-fold: to devise a plan to make the area profitable for the Union, and to manage the transition of African Americans from slavery to freedom.

[i] Edward Pierce, “The Contrabands of Fort Monroe,” Atlantic Monthly, November 1861.

[ii] Edward Pierce, “The Freedmen at Port Royal,” Atlantic Monthly, September 1863.

Bibliography

Pierce, Edward L. “The Contrabands of Fort Monroe.” Atlantic Monthly , November 1861. http://www.drbronsontours.com/bronsonedwardlpiercecontrabandsnov1861.html

Pierce, Edward L. “ The Freedmen at Port Royal.” Atlantic Monthly, September 1863. http://www.drbronsontours.com/bronsonfreedmenatportroyalpiercesept1863.html

“The Negroes at Port Royal.” New York Daily Tribune , February 19 1862. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030213/1862-02-19/ed-1/seq-4/

Pierce, Edward L. “Light on the Slavery Question; Negroes in South Carolina: Report of the Government Agent.” New York Daily Tribune , February 19 1862. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030213/1862-02-19/ed-1/seq-6/

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Port royal experiment (1862-1865).

The Port Royal Experiment, the first major attempt by Northerners to reconstruct the Southern political and economic system, began only seven months after the firing on Fort Sumter. On November 7, 1861 the Union Army occupied South Carolina’s Sea Islands, freeing approximately 10,000 slaves. As the Confederate Army and white plantation owners fled, Northerners began to capitalize on their possession of an area world famous for its cotton. During the first year of occupation African American field hands harvested approximately 90,000 lbs. of the crop. The workers were paid $1 for every 400 pounds harvested and thus were the first former slaves freed by Union forces to earn wages for their labor.

In January of 1862 Union General Thomas W. Sherman requested teachers from the North to train the ex-slaves. Three months later U.S. Secretary of Treasury Salmon Chase appointed Boston, Massachusetts attorney Edward L. Pierce to begin the Port Royal Experiment, which would create schools and hospitals for ex-slaves and to allow them to buy and run plantations. That same month the steamship Atlantic left New York City, New York bound for Port Royal. On board were 53 missionaries including skilled teachers, ministers and doctors who had volunteered to help promote this experiment. In April The Port Royal Relief Committee of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania dispatched Laura Matilda Towne with funds to found the Penn School, one of the largest of the missionary schools created during the Port Royal Experiment.

In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln issued new land redistribution policies that allowed nearly 40,000 acres of abandoned Confederate plantations to be divided among 16,000 families of the “African race.” The freed people were to purchase the land at $1.25 per acre. Almost immediately local blacks bought about 2,000 acres of land. White Northerners also purchased land. Edward Philbrick, for example, bought 11 plantations that collectively covered 7,000 acres. His holdings supported 950 African Americans as tenant farmers. Union General Ormsby Mitchel granted African American islanders permission to found the town of Mitchelville on Hilton Head Island, the first of many all-black communities. By 1865 Mitchelville had 1,500 inhabitants.

As the Union moved closer to victory however, enthusiasm for the Port Royal Experiment began to wane. Many Northern whites, initially concerned about compensating African Americans for the injustices they had endured during slavery, now saw voting rights rather than land ownership as the key component to black progress.  More conservative Northerners were increasingly uneasy about the precedent set by large scale land confiscation.

It was the death of President Abraham Lincoln in April 1865, however, that ended momentum for the experiment. The new president, Andrew Johnson, was determined to restore all lands back to their previous white owners. In the summer of 1865 he ordered Brigadier General Rufus Saxton to begin that process. Nonetheless not all white owners returned to the Sea Islands, and thousands of black landowners and their descendants continued to farm their lands until well into the 20th century.

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Cite this entry in APA format:

Source of the author's information:.

Akiko Ochiai, “The Port Royal Experiment Revisited: Northern Visions of Reconstruction and the Land Question,” The New England Quarterly 74.1 (2001): 94-117; Willie Lee Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964).

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Port Royal Experiment

1861–1870s

The Port Royal Experiment, also called the Sea Island Experiment, was an early humanitarian effort to prepare the former slaves of the South Carolina Sea Islands for inclusion as free citizens in American public life.

The Port Royal Experiment, also called the Sea Island Experiment, was an early humanitarian effort to prepare the former slaves of the South Carolina Sea Islands for inclusion as free citizens in American public life. The Port Royal Experiment was made possible by the U.S. Navy’s conquest of the Sea Islands of Beaufort District after the naval victory at the Battle of Port Royal on November 7, 1861. The islands remained in Union hands until the end of the war. The conquest was so swift that Beaufort District planters abandoned most of their property and hurriedly evacuated inland. Most importantly, nearly ten thousand slaves were abandoned on island plantations. Still not legally considered free, the abandoned slaves were declared “contraband of war” and placed under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase sent his friend Edward L. Pierce of Boston to Port Royal to recommend measures to the federal government for dealing with the Sea Island “contrabands.” Reverend Mansfield French was dispatched to Port Royal at the same time as agent of the New York–based American Missionary Association to ascertain what help was needed for the Sea Island blacks. Both men arrived at Port Royal in January 1862.

The combination of federal efforts to assist and employ the Sea Island blacks and the efforts of several philanthropic and missionary organizations to prepare the “contrabands” for emancipation led to the Port Royal Experiment. While the federal government concentrated on employing the “contrabands” to harvest and process the valuable Sea Island cotton, philanthropic organizations and religious missionaries assumed the task of providing education, which the Sea Island blacks eagerly sought. Both the government and private charities provided food, clothing, and medical assistance. In February 1862 Pierce returned to Boston and helped organize the Educational Commission and to seek volunteers for this “experiment” in the Sea Islands. At the same time, the National Freedmen’s Relief Association in New York was collecting donations and enlisting volunteers to assist as well.

In March 1862 the steamer Atlantic brought the first contingent of these Boston and New York volunteers and philanthropists to Port Royal. Dubbed “Gideonites” by contemptuous Union soldiers, the volunteers were a mixed group of missionaries intent on teaching, organizing, evangelizing, or doing whatever good they could at Port Royal. Although diverse in their makeup, they were united by their fervent opposition to slavery and determination to help guide the liberated slaves of the Sea Islands. In April 1862 a second contingent of “Gideonites” arrived from Philadelphia, sponsored by that city’s Port Royal Relief Committee. Prominent among this contingent was Laura Towne, who would found the Penn School on St. Helena Island. These groups were the vanguard of scores of missionaries who came to the Sea Islands of Beaufort District during the Civil War.

The partnership between the federal government and various philanthropic agencies to carry out humanitarian enterprises among the Sea Island blacks continued throughout the war. Notable among their achievements was the establishment of private freedmen’s schools that continued a century and a half after the Port Royal Experiment ended. The Mather School on Port Royal Island survived until the 1960s, and the Penn School on St. Helena Island continued into the twenty-first century as the Penn Community Center.

On January 1, 1863, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect for the “contrabands” of the Sea Islands. Thereafter they were “freedmen” and entitled to many rights and responsibilities as citizens. This was the pinnacle of the Port Royal Experiment and a day of jubilation for Sea Island blacks.

Following emancipation, another effort of the Port Royal Experiment was the redistribution of abandoned plantation lands to the former slaves. Under the authority of the U.S. Direct Tax Act of 1862, most of the Sea Island plantations in Beaufort District were seized for nonpayment of taxes. Leaders of the Port Royal Experiment lobbied the federal government to distribute this land in small parcels to the freedmen. Of the 101,930 acres seized, approximately one-third was purchased on favorable terms by the freedmen. Much of Beaufort County retained the character of small black landholding into the twenty-first century.

On March 3, 1865, the federal government established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands within the War Department to deal with the humanitarian problems across the South at the close of the Civil War. Better known as the Freedmen’s Bureau, it was responsible for food, clothing, and medical relief as well as educational services for the freedmen. The first Freedmen’s Bureau office in South Carolina was opened in Beaufort in 1865, and many volunteers of the Port Royal Experiment became leaders of the agency. General Rufus Saxton, the military governor of the Sea Islands and a major supporter of the Port Royal Experiment, was the Freedman’s Bureau director for South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. The Freedman’s Bureau was the first humanitarian, or “welfare,” agency established by the U.S. government. The Freedman’s Bureau was officially disbanded in 1872, but the lingering influence of the Port Royal Experiment survived in Beaufort County’s unique landownership patterns and educational institutions.

Abbott, Martin. The Freedmen’s Bureau in South Carolina, 1865–1872. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967.

Forten, Charlotte L. The Journal of Charlotte Forten: A Free Negro in the Slave Era. 1953. Reprint, New York: Norton, 1981.

Holland, Rupert Sargent, ed. Letters and Diary of Laura Towne: Written from the Sea Islands of South Carolina, 1862–1884. 1912. Reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969.

Pearson, Elizabeth Ware, ed. Letters from Port Royal: Written at the Time of the Civil War. 1906. Reprint, New York: Arno, 1969.

Rose, Willie Lee. Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment. 1964. Reprint, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999.

• Written by Lawrence S. Rowland

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Port Royal Experiment

The port royal experiment (1862 – 1865).

The Port Royal Experiment, the first major attempt by Northerners to reconstruct the Southern political and economic system, began only seven months after the firing on Fort Sumter. On November 7, 1861 the Union Army occupied South Carolina’s Sea Islands, freeing approximately 10,000 slaves. As the Confederate Army and white plantation owners fled, Northerners began to capitalize on their possession of an area world famous for its cotton. During the first year of occupation African American field hands harvested approximately 90,000 lbs. of the crop. The workers were paid $1 for every 400 pounds harvested and thus were the first former slaves freed by Union forces to earn wages for their labor.

In January of 1862 Union General Thomas West Sherman requested teachers from the North to train the ex-slaves. Three months later U.S. Secretary of Treasury Salmon Chase appointed Boston attorney Edward L. Pierce to begin the Port Royal Experiment, which would create schools and hospitals for ex-slaves and to allow them to buy and run plantations. That same month the steamship Atlantic left New York City bound for Port Royal. On board were 53 missionaries including skilled teachers, ministers and doctors who had volunteered to help promote this experiment. In April The Port Royal Relief Committee of Philadelphia dispatched Laura Matilda Towne with funds to found the Penn School, one of the largest of the missionary schools created during the Port Royal Experiment.

In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln issued new land redistribution policies that allowed nearly 40,000 acres of abandoned Confederate plantations to be divided among 16,000 families of the “African race.” The freed people were to purchase the land at $1.25 per acre. Almost immediately local blacks bought about 2,000 acres of land. White Northerners also purchased land. Edward Philbrick, for example, bought 11 plantations that collectively covered 7,000 acres. His holdings supported 950 African Americans as tenant farmers. Union General Ormsby Mitchel granted African American islanders permission to found the town of Mitchelville on Hilton Head Island, the first of many all-black communities. By 1865 Mitchelville had 1,500 inhabitants.

As the Union moved closer to victory however, enthusiasm for the Port Royal Experiment began to wane. Many Northern whites, initially concerned about compensating African Americans for the injustices they had endured during slavery, now saw voting rights rather than land ownership as the key component to black progress.  More conservative Northerners were increasingly uneasy about the precedent set by large scale land confiscation.

It was the death of President Abraham Lincoln in April 1865, however, that ended momentum for the experiment. The new president, Andrew Johnson, was determined to restore all lands back to their previous white owners. In the summer of 1865 he ordered Brigadier General Rufus Saxton , an abolitionist, to begin that process. Nonetheless not all white owners returned to the Sea Islands, and thousands of black landowners and their descendants continued to farm their lands until well into the 20th century.

For More Information :

Ochiai, A. (2001). The Port Royal Experiment Revisited : Northern Visions of Reconstruction and the Land Question.  The New England Quarterly,   74 (1), 94-117. doi:10.2307/3185461

Rose, W. L. (1976). Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment.  (New York: Oxford University Press).

Republished with permission from:  BlackPast.org

How to Cite this Article (APA Format):  Jackson, J. (n.d.). The Port Royal experiment (1862 – 1865).  Social Welfare History Project.  Retrieved from https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/eras/civil-war-reconstruction/port-royal-experiment/

2 Replies to “Port Royal Experiment”

The General that requested help from northerners with the Freedman was Thomas West Sherman, not William T. Sherman although they may have been related.

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