[1] Later "The New England Freedmen's Aid Society."

[2] The name Port Royal, in ante-bellum days used only of the island on which Beaufort is situated and of the entrance to the Beaufort River, was given by the United States Government to the military post and the harbor at Hilton Head, and to the post-office there. Hence the Sea Island district came to be referred to in the North as "Port Royal."

[3] Collector Barney of the Port of New York.

[4] Edward L. Pierce (see Introduction).

[5] Richard Soule, Jr.

[6] Edward W. Hooper, afterwards for many years Treasurer of Harvard College.

[7] G. is W. C. G. of these letters.

[8] John M. Forbes, who had hired a house at Beaufort for a few months.

[9] Rev. Mansfield French had already spent some weeks at Port Royal.

[10] Thrown up by the island planters after the outbreak of the war.

[11] Thomas A. Coffin's large plantation at the eastern end of St. Helena Island.

[12] F. A. Eustis of Milton, who was part owner of the plantation in question.

[13] Mr. Philbrick had gone down to Hilton Head again to see about his luggage.

[14] See page v.

[15] Pine Grove and Fripp Point.

[16] The drivers, negroes holding a position next below the white overseers, were found by the Northerners still keeping the keys and trying to exert their authority.

[17] For clothing their masters had been in the habit of giving them material for two suits a year; a pair of blankets every few years made up the sum of gratuities.

[18] Mrs. Philbrick.

[19] Miss Laura E. Towne of Philadelphia. She never returned to live in the North. The school she started in 1862 is still in existence, under the name of the Penn Normal, Industrial, and Agricultural School.

[20] Known as the Smith Plantation.

[21] The ferry to Ladies Island, across which ran the road to St. Helena Island and Mr. Philbrick's plantations.

[22] The plantation "praise-house," as the negroes' church was called, was often merely "a rather larger and nicer negro hut than the others. Here the master was an exemplary old Baptist Christian, who has left his house full of religious magazines and papers, and built his people quite a nice little house,—the best on this part of the Island."

(Letter of W. C. G., April 22, 1862.)

[23] Pine Grove was in this respect an exception among the Sea Island plantations.

[24] See p. 33.

[25] Mrs. Philbrick.

[26] "The true 'shout' takes place on Sundays or on 'praise'-nights through the week, and either in the praise-house or some cabin in which a regular religious meeting has been held. Very likely more than half the population of the plantation is gathered together. Let it be the evening, and a light-wood fire burns red before the door to the house and on the hearth.... The benches are pushed back to the wall when the formal meeting is over, and old and young, men and women, sprucely-dressed young men, grotesquely half-clad field-hands—the women generally with gay handkerchiefs twisted about their heads and with short skirts—boys with tattered shirts and men's trousers, young girls barefooted, all stand up in the middle of the floor, and when the 'sperichil' is struck up, begin first walking and by-and-by shuffling round, one after the other, in a ring. The foot is hardly taken from the floor, and the progression is mainly due to a jerking, hitching motion, which agitates the entire shouter, and soon brings out streams of perspiration. Sometimes they dance silently, sometimes as they shuffle they sing the chorus of the spiritual, and sometimes the song itself is also sung by the dancers. But more frequently a band, composed of some of the best singers and of tired shouters, stand at the side of the room to 'base' the others, singing the body of the song and clapping their hands together or on the knees. Song and dance are alike extremely energetic, and often, when the shout lasts into the middle of the night, the monotonous thud, thud of the feet prevents sleep within half a mile of the praise-house." (New York Nation, May 30, 1867.)

[27] Miss Lucy McKim, in a letter to the Boston Journal of Music, November 8, 1862.

[28] This old woman Mr. Philbrick had found "keeping guard over her late master's household goods—i. e., selling them."

[29] A few weeks earlier than this, one of the drivers told Mr. Philbrick that Washington Fripp had just been shot near Charleston for refusing to enlist.

[30] A "title" was a negro surname of whatever derivation.

[31] The following description of Limus and his subsequent doings is copied from a letter of W. C. G.'s (June 12, 1863), which was printed by the Educational Commission in one of a series of leaflets containing extracts from Port Royal letters:

"He is a black Yankee. Without a drop of white blood in him, he has the energy and 'cuteness and big eye for his own advantage of a born New Englander. He is not very moral or scrupulous, and the church-members will tell you 'not yet,' with a smile, if you ask whether he belongs to them. But he leads them all in enterprise, and his ambition and consequent prosperity make his example a very useful one on the plantation. Half the men on the island fenced in gardens last autumn, behind their houses, in which they now raise vegetables for themselves and the Hilton Head markets. Limus in his half-acre has quite a little farmyard besides. With poultry-houses, pig-pens, and corn-houses, the array is very imposing. He has even a stable, for he made out some title to a horse, which was allowed; and then he begged a pair of wheels and makes a cart for his work; and not to leave the luxuries behind, he next rigs up a kind of sulky and bows to the white men from his carriage. As he keeps his table in corresponding style,—for he buys more sugar ... than any other two families,—of course the establishment is rather expensive. So, to provide the means, he has three permanent irons in the fire—his cotton, his Hilton Head express, and his seine. Before the fishing season commenced, a pack of dogs for deer-hunting took the place of the net. While other families 'carry' from three to six or seven acres of cotton, Limus says he must have fourteen. To help his wife and daughters keep this in good order, he went over to the rendezvous for refugees, and imported a family to the plantation, the men of which he hired at $8 a month.... With a large boat which he owns, he usually makes weekly trips to Hilton Head, twenty miles distant, carrying passengers, produce and fish. These last he takes in an immense seine,—an abandoned chattel,—for the use of which he pays Government by furnishing General Hunter and staff with the finer specimens, and then has ten to twenty bushels for sale. Apparently he is either dissatisfied with this arrangement or means to extend his operations, for he asks me to bring him another seine for which I am to pay $70. I presume his savings since 'the guns fired at Bay Point'—which is the native record of the capture of the island—amount to four or five hundred dollars. He is all ready to buy land, and I expect to see him in ten years a tolerably rich man. Limus has, it is true, but few equals on the islands, and yet there are many who follow not far behind him."

[32] Major-General David Hunter, who on March 31 had taken command of the newly created Department of the South, consisting of the states of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

[33] Dr. Wakefield was physician for that end of St. Helena Island.

[34] On Cockspur Island, Georgia.

[35] As the quarter-acre "task," which was all that the planters had required of their slaves each day, had occupied about four or five hours only, it will be seen that the slaves on the Sea Islands had not been overworked, though they had been underfed. Like the "task," the "private patches" were also an institution retained, at E. L. Pierce's suggestion, from slavery times, with the difference that their size was very much increased—often from a fraction of an acre to ten times that amount.

[36] By the rebels.

[37] He had already had sent down from the North a quantity of articles to sell to the negroes.

[38] Brigadier-General Isaac I. Stevens, then at Beaufort, commanding the Second Division.

[39] The "Brick Church" was a Baptist Church which had always been used by both blacks and whites. Less than a mile away stood the "White Church," Episcopalian,—closed since the flight of the planters.

[40] Issued May 9, and on May 19, nullified by President Lincoln.

[41] South Carolina corn is white flint corn.

[42] The cotton-agent who had been at Coffin's Point.

[43] The Government not only had made no definite promise of payment, but it was of course unable to bring to bear on the negroes any compulsion of any sort. They worked or not, as they liked, and when they liked.

[44] The old system of labor—the system in force in slavery times—had been the "gang system," the laborers working all together, so that no one had continuous responsibility for any one piece of land.

[45] For Coffin's Point.

[46] As a result of Lincoln's proclamation of May 19 (see p. 50n.), the regiment, all but one company, was disbanded in August.

[47] This burying-place was "an unfenced quarter of an acre of perfectly wild, tangled woodland in the midst of the cotton-field, halfway between here [the 'white house'] and the quarters. Nothing ever marks the graves, but the place is entirely devoted to them."

[From a letter of H. W.'s, June 5, '62.]

[48] Saxton's first general order, announcing his arrival, is dated June 28.

[49] E. L. Pierce had changed his headquarters from "Pope's."

[50] From the first the anti-slavery Northerners at Port Royal had had no hesitation in telling their employees that they were freemen. Indeed, they had no choice but to do so, the tadpoles on these islands, as Mr. Philbrick said, having "virtually shed their tails in course of nature already."

[51] Pierce's second report to Secretary Chase on the Sea Islands, dated June 2, 1862.

[52] "We have to spend more than half our time," writes Mr. Philbrick in September, "getting our limited supplies."

[53] Richard Soule, Jr., was General Superintendent of St. Helena and Ladies Islands, and was living at Edgar Fripp's plantation.

[54] The first of many references to the frequent lack of sympathy shown by army officers.

[55] That is, the account had been taken before he came South.

[56] See page 37.

[57] The term "Hunting Island" was applied to several of the outside islands collectively.

[58] Thomas Astor Coffin, of Coffin's Point.

[59] The chief "hindrance" was, of course, the late date at which work on the cotton crop had been started; the land should have been prepared in February, and the planting begun at the end of March.

[60] The preliminary proclamation of emancipation, dated September 22, 1862.

[61] It will be seen that this excellent idea was not adopted by the authorities.

[62] Edward W. Hooper served on Saxton's staff, with the rank of Captain.

[63] He came with authority to raise negro troops.

[64] See p. 58.

[65] As Saxton's agent to collect and ship the cotton crop. See p. 99.

[66] The superintendents of the Second Division of the Sea Islands.

[67] The negroes had broken the cotton-gins by way of putting their slavery more completely behind them.

[68] Again the cotton-agent.

[69] Evidently the offer of a captaincy.

[70] Of Prince Rivers, who became color-sergeant and provost-sergeant in the First South Carolina Volunteers, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, its colonel, writes: "There is not a white officer in this regiment who has more administrative ability, or more absolute authority over the men; they do not love him, but his mere presence has controlling power over them. He writes well enough to prepare for me a daily report of his duties in the camp; if his education reached a higher point, I see no reason why he should not command the Army of the Potomac. He is jet-black, or rather, I should say, wine-black; his complexion, like that of others of my darkest men, having a sort of rich, clear depth, without a trace of sootiness, and to my eye very handsome. His features are tolerably regular, and full of command, and his figure superior to that of any of our white officers, being six feet high, perfectly proportioned, and of apparently inexhaustible strength and activity. His gait is like a panther's; I never saw such a tread. No anti-slavery novel has described a man of such marked ability. He makes Toussaint perfectly intelligible; and if there should ever be a black monarchy in South Carolina, he will be its king." (Army Life in a Black Regiment, pp. 57, 58.)

[71] "These heaps are, lucus a non, called holes." C. P. W.

[72] The First South Carolina Volunteers (colored), Thomas Wentworth Higginson, colonel.

[73] Usually referred to as the "Hunter Regiment."

[74] A town very near the extreme southern point of the Georgia coast.

[75] After Mitchel's death, Brannan again acted as head of the Department, till General Hunter's return in January, 1863.

[76] To the Dr. Jenkins plantation.

[77] Stone or seed-cotton is unginned cotton.

[78] Of course on almost all the plantations no taxes had been paid, so that the Government was at liberty to sell them at auction.

[79] That is, of drawing their own rations.

[80] General Hunter did not actually arrive until January. See note 1 [now Footnote 75], p. 108.

[81] The $200,000 (mentioned on page 110) received by the Government for the crop of 1861.

[82] Saxton.

[83] This plan of operations was adopted by General Saxton.

[84] Dr. LeBaron Russell, of the Committee on Teachers of the Educational Commission.

[85] Taking the plantations as a whole, the Government lost in 1862 the whole $200,000 which it had cleared from the planters' big cotton crop of 1861.

[86] On Port Royal Island "whole fields of corn, fifty acres in extent, have been stripped of every ear before hard enough to be stored."

[87] Henry W. Halleck, since July 11 General-in-Chief of the Army, with headquarters at Washington.

[88] Another young Harvard graduate, cousin of H. W., come to teach the two Fripp schools.

[89] Mr. Philbrick had changed his residence to the Oaks.

[90] An institution situated in Beaufort, managed by the New York Commission.

[91] Of Corporal Sutton Colonel Higginson says: "If not in all respects the ablest, he was the wisest man in our ranks. As large, as powerful, and as black as our good-looking Color-sergeant, but more heavily built and with less personal beauty, he had a more massive brain and a far more meditative and systematic intellect. Not yet grounded even in the spelling-book, his modes of thought were nevertheless strong, lucid, and accurate; and he yearned and pined for intellectual companionship beyond all ignorant men whom I have ever met. I believe that he would have talked all day and all night, for days together, to any officer who could instruct him, until his companion, at least, fell asleep exhausted. His comprehension of the whole problem of slavery was more thorough and far-reaching than that of any Abolitionist, so far as its social and military aspects went; in that direction I could teach him nothing, and he taught me much. But it was his methods of thought which always impressed me chiefly; superficial brilliancy he left to others, and grasped at the solid truth." (Army Life in a Black Regiment, p. 62.)

[92] Mr. Philbrick describes the feast: "I walked about for a half hour watching the carving, which was done mostly with axes, and the eager pressing of the hungry crowds about the rough board tables, by which each ox was surrounded. The meat didn't look very inviting."

[93] Miss Forten was of partly negro blood. H. W. says of her elsewhere: "She has one of the sweetest voices I ever heard. The negroes all knew the instant they saw her what she was, but she has been treated by them with universal respect. She is an educated lady."

[94] When General Hunter, bent on raising his negro troops, asked the Secretary of War for 50,000 muskets, "with authority to arm such loyal men as I find in the country, whenever, in my opinion, they can be used advantageously against the enemy," he added: "It is important that I should be able to know and distinguish these men at once, and for this purpose I respectfully request that 50,000 pairs of scarlet pantaloons may be sent me; and this is all the clothing I shall require for these people." (Hunter to Stanton, April 3, 1862.) Of the privates of the First S. C. V., when clothed in these trousers, Colonel Higginson writes: "Their coloring suited me, all but the legs, which were clad in a lively scarlet, as intolerable to my eyes as if I had been a turkey." (Army Life in a Black Regiment, p. 7.)