The Legacy of the Port Royal Experiment

A group of formerly enslaved children pose for a photo during the Port Royal Experiment on the Smith Plantation on the Sea Islands.

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The Port Royal Experiment was not intended to be a re-envisioning of America, but it evolved as a model for how to transition away from slavery during Reconstruction. As US forces captured places elsewhere during the war and as the war ended, the Port Royal Experiment became a blueprint for officials in those places. The Port Royal Experiment was, as historian Willie Lee Rose termed it, a “Rehearsal for Reconstruction.”

Each of the different components of the Port Royal Experiment reflected varying beliefs and the political and social framework of the nation. For many government officials on the islands – most from the newly formed Republican party – labor reforms were the path to prosperity for the formerly enslaved people. Free labor ideology had been a foundational principal of the party a decade earlier. For the missionaries of the northeast, educational reform, born out of the social movements of the 1840s-1850s, was the emphasis. For the formerly enslaved people, and for many Southerners in general, property ownership was widely seen as the key to a successful transition away from the institution of slavery. All the while, the military was in the area to fight and win a war. Without Union victory, the gains of the Port Royal Experiment would have been lost.

150 years after the conclusion of the Civil War and the Port Royal Experiment, the National Park Service began to identify sites around the country that could interpret the story of Reconstruction in the United States. However, the community around Beaufort had long been passionate about preserving and telling the story of the Port Royal Experiment. For example, Mitchelville Freedom Park, reflects the story of the Port Royal Experiment by preserving the site of one of the earliest communities where these ideas could be put into practice. Institutions like Penn Center and the Mather School Interpretive Center tell the story of education on Sea Islands.

In early 2017, Reconstruction Era National Historical Park was formally established to tell the story of the Reconstruction era everywhere in the United States, using the sites and stories of the Port Royal Experience as a case study of the dawn of Reconstruction.

Additional Reading

• Rehearsal for Reconstruction by Willie Lee Rose
• Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption, 1861–1893: The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina by Stephen Wise and Lawrence Rowland
• The Port Royal Experiment: A Case Study in Development by Kevin Dougherty
• Penn Center: A History Preserved by Orville Vernon Burton