Port Royal Experiment
The Port Royal Experiment was a program begun 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 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.
In 1862, General Ormsby M. Mitchel helped African Americans to found the town of Mitchelville on Hilton Head Island.
In 1865 President Andrew Johnson ended the experiment, returning the land to its previous white owners.
which gives an indication of the territory held in the Port Royal Experiment: An estimate of the number of plantations open to cultivation, and of the persons upon the territory protected by the forces of the United States, if only approximate to the truth, may prove convenient in providing a proper system of administration.
The populous island of North Edisto, lying in the direction of Charleston, and giving the name to the finest cotton, is still visited by the rebels.
A part near Botany Bay Island is commanded by the guns of one of our war vessels, under which a colony of one thousand negroes sought protection, where they have been temporarily subsisted from its stores.
The Boston Educational Commission for Freedmen was established in response to a call made by E.L. Pierce as a philanthropic organization.
[8][9][10] The experiment concluded that the technique created during his time at Port Royal was effective enough to teach adults.
The research was presented to the Boston and New York Education Commissions and published in the Journal of The Massachusetts Teachers Association.
Many other such philanthropic organizations also merged into different branches of the American Freedman's Union Commission with the intention of the proliferation of the education of African-Americans.
