Hey everyone, thanks for downloading the 78th episode of our Civil War podcast.

My name is Rich.

I'm Tracy. Hello y'all. Welcome to the podcast. In the last episode, as y'all will recall,

Rich and I started to talk about what happened on the Sea Islands in the aftermath of the

Union victory down in South Carolina at Port Royal Sound. This week we'll continue with

that discussion talking about the Port Royal Experiment, which many people viewed as

a dress rehearsal for reconstruction.

As we said last time, after the Battle of Port Royal Sound in November 1861, the hasty

departure of almost every local white inhabitant from South Carolina's Sea Islands left the

victorious Federals with the immediate problem of what to do with the 10,000 slaves who remained

behind after the whites had fled. And of perhaps more importance in the eyes of some, what

to do with the thousands of acres of cotton fields that stood abandoned.

The newly liberated Sea Island slaves soon realized that although they were no longer

under the control of their former owners, they were now cut up in a new and uncertain situation

in which they were neither slaves nor Freeman. As into the power vacuum created by the departure

of their former masters, rushed and influx of military officers, treasury officials, northern

financiers, school teachers, missionaries, and do-goaters of all stripes, all intent on

either aiding the blacks or exploiting them.

Many of the Northerners who went south to the Sea Islands had the best of intentions. They

were abolitionists who wished to help the liberated slaves make the most of their deliverance

from bondage. They wished to educate and train the blacks to take up, quote, all the privileges

of citizenship, end quote, which was the ultimate goal envisioned by Edward Pierce, who

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