He classified the slaves living there as "contraband", following the precedent of General Benjamin Butler at Fort Monroe in 1861, and did not return them to Confederate slaveholders.
James believed the Roanoke Island Colony was an important experiment in black freedom and a potential model for other freedmen communities.
Freedmen built churches and set up the first free school for black children here; and they were soon joined by Northern missionary teachers who came to the South to help the effort.
Long used for fishing camps by varying cultures of indigenous peoples, Roanoke Island was first colonized by an English explorer in 1584.
Captain John White, named governor by Raleigh, returned to England in August that year for more supplies.
When North Carolina seceded from the Union in 1861, the Confederacy made plans to fortify Roanoke Island to protect the bay and inland waterways.
After the Emancipation Proclamation, he appointed Horace James, a Congregational chaplain, as "Superintendent of Negro Affairs for the North Carolina District."
James was to settle the people, give them farming tools, and teach them to prepare for a free community.
President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had freed slaves in Confederate areas occupied by Union troops.
The Roanoke Island Freedmen's Colony was a safe haven for slaves seeking refuge with the Union Army during the Civil War.
[5] Freedmen recruited from Roanoke Island formed the "first company of the North Carolina Colored Volunteers".
[6] Major General Rush Hawkins, who succeeded Foster in 1863 at the command on the island, ordered the freedmen who enlisted in the army or worked for the military be paid "ten dollars a month plus one ration and a soldier's allowance of clothing.
"[7] According to an article by the National Park Service, "of nearly 4,000 North Carolina enlistees, over 150 men were recruited from the Roanoke Island community alone.
"[5] The Union Army allowed families of black soldiers to live at Roanoke Island as a place of refuge.
Those men who were not recruited by the army served as woodcutters, teamsters, longshoremen, carpenters, blacksmiths, and workers in other trades.
[7]The Army allocated small plots of land to the households of the colony, and encouraged the freedmen to produce crops for food supplements.
[9] After the American Civil War started, James joined the Union Army as a chaplain, by then having had nearly 20 years experience as a pastor.
He was to arrange for food, shelter, adequate clothing and medical care for the many blacks in the area, who had come to Union lines for freedom and refuge.
James believed that a lumber industry would help the Roanoke colony grow and become economically self-sufficient.
The freedpeople had a variety of skills: many were artisans, who made baskets, shoes, barrels, shingles, and boats, which could be traded or sold.
James intended to market both the natural resources and the freedmen's crops, such as cotton, corn, turpentine, resin, tar, timber, fish, oysters, wood, reeds, and grapes, to make the colony self-sufficient.
[7] While thinking freedmen should have the rights of citizens, he also held that "there was a natural stratification of society" and African Americans were near the bottom.
[7] Much of the aid, education, and social work on the island was planned and carried out by representatives of the American Missionary Association, also known as AMA.
They sent missionaries to Roanoke Island to aid the colony through education, medicine, food, and religious services.
Monthly Sabbath school concerts featured students' singing hymns and reciting passages from the Bible.
Although the facilities and supplies were limited in each case, the freedmen's eagerness to learn kept each classroom filled "to its utmost capacity".
[8] As more freedmen entered the Union Army, their families became more dependent on the government and military for aid because of the island's isolation.
The commanding officers, such as Colonel Rush Hawkins, had ordered subordinates to treat freedmen "with respect," but tensions arose.
"[7] When President Johnson issued his "Amnesty Proclamation" in 1865, he ordered all "property seized by the Union forces during the war be returned."
[8] After the war, numerous freedmen moved from rural areas to towns and cities to evade white supervision and gain more opportunities as craftsmen.