Stories

Paying wages to the formerly enslaved people served two purposes for the government officials developing the Port Royal Experiment. It helped to provide a solution of where people should live. Wages also began to put cash into the hands of people who had toiled this land for generations. Many sought to use that cash to secure that land for themselves.

A few weeks after the Battle of Port Royal, US soldiers and sailors came ashore around Beaufort and found thousands of now formerly enslaved people in control of the region. The military had no real plan yet for what to do with these people or even their legal status.

In the fall of 1861 after the Battle of Port Royal, the US military came ashore around Beaufort and found thousands of now formerly enslaved people in control of the region. The military had no real plan yet for what to do with these people or even their legal status. Newly freed Black South Carolinians were active participants. They demanded access to programs to support labor reforms, land redistribution, quality education, and military service.

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. Historian Willie Lee Rose termed it a “Rehearsal for Reconstruction.”

Military service was an important component of the Port Royal Experiment. The success of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers led to Black military service becoming a core foundation of the arguments in favor of extending citizenship and voting rights to formerly enslaved people.

Education is important for understanding the goals of the Port Royal Experiment, both for the missionaries who established them and for the formerly enslaved people enrolling as students.

Learn about the nearly hundred-year history of the Pioneer Fire Company, a Black Volunteer Fire Company from the Reconstruction era in Beaufort, South Carolina.

Learn how the Confiscation Act and Revenue Acts of 1861 set the stage for land reform in the Sea Islands of South Carolina. Land reform that would allow formerly enslaved people to purchase land that generations would cherish.

On the night of May 12, approximately sixteen freedom seekers made a daring escape from enslavement by commandeering the Confederate steamer the “Planter.” Piloting the ship from Charleston to Beaufort the crew mimicked the Confederate signals and safely reached emancipation the morning of May 13.

In the decades after the Civil War during Reconstruction, the United States began to rapidly industrialize. Beginning in the late 1860s, laborers – many of them Civil War veterans - began to organize labor unions. One of the most prominent unions that emerged during this time was the Knights of Labor, founded in 1869 in Philadelphia. In 1885, members of the Knights of Labor went out on strike against railroad financier Jay Gould and won.