Story of America Cards

The Port Royal Experiment

When African American slaves were abandoned by their plantation owners on the Sea Islands of South Carolina as the Union took over a Program was made to help them and to teach the slaves that they were now free and can become independent; this Program was called The Port Royal Experiment and here will be learning about it from the Story of America cards category The Civil War....so let's begin.

(What was The Port Royal Experiment?)

The Port Royal Experiment was a program that began 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.

(Teaching Slaves to be Free)

On the Atlantic Coast between Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia lie a group of Islands known as Sea Islands of South Carolina, the largest of which is Port Royal.

On November 7th 1861, just as the Civil War began, a Union fleet under Commodore Samuel Francis DuPont attacked these islands, but, by the time the navy had landed, all had fled. The navy found only deserted mansions and 10,000 slaves, who represented 80% of the preinvasion population.

Now these people had been suddenly abandoned, with no one to guide them in gathering the cotton crop that would soon need harvesting. It was clear to Union leaders, including Secretary of Treasury; Salmon P. Chase, that unless something were done quickly the support of these 10,000 slaves would fall to the Union.

Chase therefore sent Edward L. Pierce, a young attorney from Boston, Massachusetts, to investigate the situation. When Pierce saw the islands and spoke with the abandoned slaves, he conceived the idea of helping these people find a new life. Returning to Boston, Pierce fired the imaginations of a number of others, including many abolitionists, and soon he had a band of young men and women eager to return with him to the islands.

Their goal was to help the blacks bring in and sell the cotton crop and prove to the world that blacks could earn equal citizenship with whites. The young 53 young volunteers many were, in fact, Clergymen were nicknamed "Gideonites" by the Union soldiers who garrisoned Port Royal.

These 41 men and 12 women earnestly desired to build churches for the blacks, teach them to read and write and to "do what they could to prepare the freemen to become self-supporting citizens." The Gideonites setup schools, distributed land, established a political system and even trained some of the slaves to be soldiers.

The worst problem they faced was their lack of farming experience although they managed to overcome this. After the Civil War some of the land on the Sea Islands was restored to its former owners. But the Port Royal Experiment, which had been closely watched by the federal government, helped shape Reconstruction policy.

As a result, many blacks were able to keep the land that has since been passed down from generation to generation as a proud Civil war heritage.

(Estimation of The Sea Islands)

With this bonus entity I'm gonna talk about the Sea Islands of South Carolina where the Port Royal Experiment took place. As what can be found on Wikipedia for the Port Royal Experiment to Estimate the number of plantations open to cultivation and for the people there the slaves abandoned by their white owners were protected by the United States.

The number of the islands that are protected and number of plantation on them come up to this;

For Port Royal (Where the Program gets its name from) there were about 65 plantations, Lady's Island had 30, Parry and Horse island had 6, Cat and Crane Island both only had 1 plantation for each, Datthaw Island had 4, Coosaw Island and Morgan Island both had 2, Saint Helena Island has about 50, Hilton Head Island had 16, Pinckney Island had 5, Bull and Barratria island has 2, Daufuskie Island has 5, and finally Hutchinson and Fenswick Islands had 6, this leaves a total of 195 (That's a lot).

The other sea islands; Otter, Pritchard, Fripp, Hunting and Phillips. Lemon and Daw do not have plantations.

(Ending)

And that was the Port Royal Experiment, I hope you got to learn more about the Program, and I'll see you next time in my other videos including all of the Story of America Cards up right now.