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The Port Royal Experiment was a program begun during the American Civil War in which former slaves successfully worked on the land abandoned by planters.
In 1861 the Union captured the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina and their main harbor, Port Royal. The white residents fled, leaving behind 10,000 black slaves. Several private Northern charity organizations stepped in to help the former slaves become self-sufficient. The result was a model of what Reconstruction could have been. The African Americans demonstrated their ability to work the land efficiently and live independently of white control. They assigned themselves daily tasks for cotton growing and spent their extra time cultivating their own crops, fishing and hunting. By selling their surplus crops, the locals acquired small amounts of property.
Among the Northerners who arrived as teachers were Mary Lambert Allen and her husband William Francis Allen from West Newton, Massachusetts. Detailed descriptions of their daily life are provided in his diaries which have been transcribed. [1] Admiration for the hard work ethic of the former slaves is mentioned, as well as the urgent need for a basic education of which they had been deprived. Allen also took notes on the language, songs and music he heard which he later published. In 1862, General Ormsby M. Mitchel helped African Americans to found the town of Mitchelville on Hilton Head Island. In 1865 President Andrew Johnson ended the experiment, returning the land to its previous white owners.
In February 1862, a report was made to the Treasury Dept. which gives an indication of the territory held in the Port Royal Experiment:
An estimate of the number of plantations open to cultivation, and of the persons upon the territory protected by the forces of the United States, if only approximate to the truth, may prove convenient in providing a proper system of administration. The following islands are thus protected, and the estimated number of plantations upon each is given:
Island Plantations Port Royal 65 Lady's 30 Parry, including Horse 6 Cat 1 Cane 1 Datthaw 4 Coosaw 2 Morgan 2 St. Helena 50 Hilton Head 16 Pinckney 5 Bull, including Barratria 2 Daufuskie 5 Hutchinson and Fenswick 6 Total 195 Or about two hundred in all.
There are several other islands thus protected, without plantations, as Otter, Pritchard, Fripp, Hunting and Phillips. Lemon and Daw have not been explored by the agents engaged in collecting cotton. The populous island of North Edisto, lying in the direction of Charleston, and giving the name to the finest cotton, is still visited by the rebels. A part near Botany Bay Island is commanded by the guns of one of our war vessels, under which a colony of one thousand negroes sought protection, where they have been temporarily subsisted from its stores. The number has within a few days been stated to have increased to 2300.
- — E. L. Pierce, The Negroes at Port Royal: Report of E. L. Pierce, Government Agent, to the Hon. Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, 1862 [2]
In the summer of 1862, Union troops protecting coastal colonies began to withdraw to reinforce Union General George B. McClellan who was engaged in the Peninsula Campaign, a series of battle between March and July. Many of the colonies were consolidated. One example was the migration of camps at Edisto Island to St. Helena Island. [3]
A special education commission was established by Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase. E. L. Pierce was the Government Agent overseeing the experiment. The committee was looking for teachers who were sent not only to educate the former slaves but also to aid them on how to govern themselves in normal society. The candidate was also responsible for intellectual, moral, and religious instruction. The Boston Educational Commission for Freedmen was established in response to a call made by E.L. Pierce as a philanthropic organization. Around the same time, the Port Royal Relief Committee of Philadelphia was formed. A New York organization united with the Boston organizations to provide relief and education for the former slaves. Many more relief organizations were established from different parts of the country. Hundreds of teachers were sent to different parts of the South. [4]
Around March 14, 1862, more than one hundred and fifty candidates applied for the special position to the special education commission, and 35 candidates were initially chosen. [5] One of the candidates was prominent educator from Ohio John Celivergos Zachos with whom Salmon P. Chase was familiar as senator and governor of Ohio.
John Celivergos Zachos, as well as Susan Walker, traveled to Port Royal from Ohio. The Boston and New York Education Commissions sent Zachos to prove that the former slaves could be educated. Zachos was on Parris Island on March 13, 1862, and he was in command of 400 freed slaves on a plantation. He spent a total of 16 months at Parris Island, where he took on many roles: army surgeon, teacher, and storekeeper. He was also in charge of the military stronghold under General Rufus Saxton. [6]
Zachos tried to teach the former slaves and studied their ability to learn. The professor realized that older slaves had a hard time because of the years of psychological abuse and torture. Zachos noted it was easier to educate the younger slaves. Towards the end of 1863, Zachos traveled back to Boston. In early 1864, Zachos assembled a group of Irish and German uneducated immigrants, both male and female. The test subjects did not speak or read English. [7]
Zachos assembled a curriculum to instruct the test subjects based on the needs of the former slaves and their ability to learn. Early on, the professor did not have a book and so was forced to use charts and the chalkboard. The pupils had to wait until March 1864 to receive the first book, The Phonic Primer and Reader. [8] [9] [10]
The experiment concluded that the technique created during his time at Port Royal was effective enough to teach adults. It was a simple method that used a unique phonic teaching method of teaching English reading by the sounds of letters. The research was presented to the Boston and New York Education Commissions and published in the Journal of The Massachusetts Teachers Association. The same year, an official book was published to educate the former adult slaves, The Phonic Primer and Reader. [9] After his work, Salmon P. Chase gave Zachos an extraordinary recommendation. [11]
The Port Royal Experiment initiated a systematic outcry for the education of the freed slaves. A massive number of organizations were established and continued educating the freed people. On March 3, 1865, roughly two months before the end of the Civil War, the Freedmen's Bureau was established. Within the next five years, it had established 4239 schools, employed 9307 teachers, and instructed 247,333 students. The higher education of African Americans was the bureau's responsibility. In many instances there was opposition among the white people of the South; moreover, in one state, the opposition became widely organized. At the same time, many former slavemasters reportedly assisted in establishing schools for the slaves and became their teachers. [12]
On May 16, 1866, a convention was held in Cleveland, Ohio, and formed the American Freedman's Union Commission. The Boston Educational Commission became the New England Branch, and the New York National Freedmen's Relief Association became the New York Branch. Many other such philanthropic organizations also merged into different branches of the American Freedman's Union Commission with the intention of the proliferation of the education of African-Americans. [13]
Samuel Gridley Howe was an American physician, abolitionist, and advocate of education for the blind. He organized and was the first director of the Perkins Institution. In 1824, he had gone to Greece to serve in the revolution as a surgeon; he also commanded troops. He arranged for support for refugees and brought many Greek children back to Boston with him for their education.
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was a U.S. government agency of early post American Civil War Reconstruction, assisting freedmen in the South. It was established on March 3, 1865, and operated briefly as a federal agency after the War, from 1865 to 1872, to direct "provisions, clothing, and fuel... for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children".
Forty acres and a mule was part of Special Field Orders No. 15, a wartime order proclaimed by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman on January 16, 1865, during the American Civil War, to allot land to some freed families, in plots of land no larger than 40 acres (16 ha). Sherman later ordered the army to lend mules for the agrarian reform effort. The field orders followed a series of conversations between Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and Radical Republican abolitionists Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens following disruptions to the institution of slavery provoked by the American Civil War. Many freed people believed, after being told by various political figures, that they had a right to own the land they had been forced to work as slaves and were eager to control their own property. Freed people widely expected to legally claim 40 acres of land. However, Abraham Lincoln's successor as president, Andrew Johnson, tried to reverse the intent of Sherman's wartime Order No. 15 and similar provisions included in the second Freedmen's Bureau bills.
The Black Codes, sometimes called the Black Laws, were laws which governed the conduct of African Americans. In 1832, James Kent wrote that "in most of the United States, there is a distinction in respect to political privileges, between free white persons and free colored persons of African blood; and in no part of the country do the latter, in point of fact, participate equally with the whites, in the exercise of civil and political rights." Although Black Codes existed before the Civil War and although many Northern states had them, the Southern U.S. states codified such laws in everyday practice. The best known of these laws were passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866, after the Civil War, in order to restrict African Americans' freedom, and in order to compel them to work for either low or no wages.
Charlotte Louise Bridges Grimké was an African-American anti-slavery activist, poet, and educator. She grew up in a prominent abolitionist family in Philadelphia. She taught school for years, including during the Civil War, to freedmen in South Carolina. Later in life, she married Francis James Grimké, a Presbyterian minister who led a major church in Washington, DC, for decades. He was a nephew of the abolitionist Grimké sisters and was active in civil rights.
Charles Pickard Ware, was an American educator and music transcriber. An abolitionist, he served as a civilian administrator in the Union Army, where he was a labor superintendent of freedmen on plantations at Port Royal, South Carolina, during the American Civil War. This included Seaside Plantation. It is here that he transcribed many slave songs with tunes and lyrics, later published in Slave Songs of the United States, which he edited with William Francis Allen and Lucy McKim Garrison. It was the first published collection of American folk music.
The American Missionary Association (AMA) was a Protestant-based abolitionist group founded on September 3, 1846 in Albany, New York. The main purpose of the organization was abolition of slavery, education of African Americans, promotion of racial equality, and spreading Christian values. Its members and leaders were of both races; The Association was chiefly sponsored by the Congregationalist churches in New England. The main goals were to abolish slavery, provide education to African Americans, and promote racial equality for free Blacks. The AMA played a significant role in several key historical events and movements, including the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Movement.
Contraband was a term commonly used in the US military during the American Civil War to describe a new status for certain people who escaped slavery or those who affiliated with Union forces. In August 1861, the Union Army and the US Congress determined that the US would no longer return people who escaped slavery who went to Union lines, but they would be classified as "contraband of war," or captured enemy property. They used many as laborers to support Union efforts and soon began to pay wages.
Mitchelville was a town built during the American Civil War for formerly enslaved people, located on what is now Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. It was named for one of the local Union Army generals, Ormsby M. Mitchel. The town was a population center for the enterprise known as the Port Royal Experiment.
Rufus Saxton was a Union Army brigadier general during the American Civil War who received America's highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor, for his actions defending Harpers Ferry during Confederate General Jackson's Valley Campaign. After the war he served as the Freedmen's Bureau's first assistant commissioner.
Benjamin Franklin Flanders was a teacher, politician and planter in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1867, he was appointed by the military commander as the 21st Governor of Louisiana during Reconstruction, a position which he held for some six months. He was the second and, as of 2023, the last Republican mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana.
The Freedmen's Colony of Roanoke Island, also known as the Roanoke Island Freedmen's Colony, or "Freedman's Colony", was founded in 1863 during the Civil War after Union Major General John G. Foster, Commander of the 18th Army Corps, captured the Confederate fortifications on Roanoke Island off North Carolina in 1862. He classified the slaves living there as "contraband", following the precedent of General Benjamin Butler at Fort Monroe in 1861, and did not return them to Confederate slaveholders. In 1863, by the Emancipation Proclamation, all slaves in Union-occupied territories were freed.
Edward Lillie Pierce was an American biographer and politician. He wrote a noted biography of Charles Sumner.
Chloe Merrick (1832–1897) was an American educator who worked to educate and improve the welfare of freedmen and their children. She established a school on Amelia Island, Florida during and after the American Civil War. In addition to teaching, she conducted appeals to her hometown of Syracuse, New York for contributions of money, goods, and clothes. She also established an orphanage. She later taught freedmen in North Carolina, where she moved for her health. In 1869, Merrick married Florida Republican Governor Harrison M. Reed. She is believed to have influenced his administration in its support for education and welfare for all residents. Public education was expanded in the state in the early 1870s for both black and white children. After Reed left office, Merrick continued to work on those issues, serving in Jacksonville, Florida for several years on the board of the new St. Luke's Hospital Association in the 1880s, which founded the city's first hospital.
Captain Edward William Hooper, known as E. W. Hooper and also colloquially as Ned, was aide-de-camp on the staff of Union Generals Rufus Saxton, Department of the South and John Adams Dix, Department of the East during the American Civil War from 1862 to 1865. Hooper also served as private secretary to General Saxton, during which time he was given the rank of captain. He was also post commander and military governor in the South Carolina Sea Islands. Subsequently, he became steward and later treasurer of Harvard College.
George H. Hanks was an abolitionist and civil rights activist and colonel in the US Civil War.
Mary Helena Zachos was an author, dramatic reader, playwright, professor, and elocutionist. She was the daughter of abolitionist and women's rights activist John Celivergos Zachos. Her father also wrote countless books in the field of elocution and was the library curator and a professor at Cooper Union twelve years after the founding of the institution. Helena followed in her father's footsteps. She was a faculty member at the same institution for over forty-two years from 1897 to 1939 teaching elocution, oratory debate, and parliamentary procedure.
Edisto Island during the American Civil War was the location of a number of minor engagements and for a time of a large colony of escaped African-American slaves during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Edisto Island was largely abandoned by planters in November 1861 and in December 1861, escaped slaves began setting up their own refugee camps there. In January 1862, armed African Americans from the island and Confederate forces clashed and a Confederate raid in reprisal killed a small number of unarmed African Americans. In February, Union forces were stationed on the island to develop it as a staging area for future campaigns against Charleston, twenty-five miles away, as well as to protect the colony, which would eventually number thousands of African Americans. As Union forces took control of the island, a number of skirmishes occurred, but Confederates withdrew. In June, most of the Union troops left the island in a campaign, which culminated in the Battle of Secessionville. In July, the remaining troops withdrew, and the colony was removed to St. Helena Island. For the rest of the war, a small number of escaped slaves and plantation owners remained and farmed the island, but it was largely abandoned. Near the end of the war, the island was again used as a location of colonies of freed slaves.
John Celivergos Zachos was a Greek-American physician, literary scholar, elocutionist, author, lecturer, inventor, and educational pioneer. He was an early proponent of equal education rights for African Americans and women. During the American Civil War, he was the superintendent at Port Royal and a main figure in the Port Royal Experiment. In his book, Phonic Primer and Reader he developed a special system to educate freed slaves. He advocated and expanded the oratory systems of François Delsarte and James Rush.
Freedmen's Schools were educational institutions created soon after the abolition of slavery in the United States to educate freedmen. Due to the remaining opposition to equality between blacks and whites, it was difficult for the formerly enslaved to receive a proper education, among a myriad of other things. Schools were made especially for blacks but were open to anyone regardless of race. These schools were far from perfect; however, they did give African Americans hope and opportunity for their future.
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