Reconstruction Era

Reconstruction Era LIBRARY OF CONGRESS / HENRY P. MOORE The U.S. Treasury hired formerly enslaved people to bring in the 1862 Sea Islands cotton crop. The effort to help fund the war against the Confederacy became an experiment in wage labor. Reconstruction Era National Historical Park South Carolina UNC LIBRARY / PENN SCHOOL PAPERS UNC LIBRARY / PENN SCHOOL PAPERS With help from the Pennsylvania Society, Penn School welcomed students in 1862 to classes in reading, writing, spelling, geography, and arithmetic at Brick Baptist Church (above) on St. Helena. Schools and churches were formative institutions in the Reconstruction era. Over 80 percent of the Sea Islands population was enslaved in 1860. Starting in 1861, historic events and individual acts catapulted thousands out of enslavement. At Reconstruction Era National Historical Park, learn what free- LIBRARY OF CONGRESS SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE A public reading of Abraham Lincoln’s draft Emancipation Proclamation took place at Camp Saxton, January 1, 1863. dom meant for people newly emancipated. They asserted their own and others’ rights to education, paid labor, property ownership, military service, and representation. NATIONAL ARCHIVES / MATHEW BRADY General Rufus Saxton, military governor of the Department of the South from 1862 to 1865, was an influential agent for change in the Sea Islands. Scholars traveled across the water to attend classes at Penn and other schools, in small wooden boats (bateaux). Photo early 1900s. LEFT: UNC LIBRARY / PENN SCHOOL PAPERS; BACKGROUND PHOTO: © LAMAR NIX Fort Sumter is located southeast of Charleston. Abandoned In November 1861, only seven months after the Civil War began, US military forces captured South Carolina’s Port Royal Sound. They intended to establish a coaling station where steam-powered ships blockading the coast could refuel. The greater impact of the capture became clear only after US forces came ashore on the Sea Islands. White residents had fled to the mainland, abandoning their properties and the people they had enslaved. In February 1862 the U.S. Treasury sent Edward Pierce to the Sea Islands to collect information. He reported a population of 8,000 to 10,000. Most were of African descent. With support from the US Secretary of the Treasury, northern ministers, and the US military, Pierce planned and implemented a program of sweeping social and economic change in the Sea Islands. Its scope far exceeded that of the initial strategic military operation. • Edisto •• Otter Otter Island. Island, Island. • Ladys • Port Island, Royal Beaufort is Island, located on Port Royal Island. • Hunting •• Saint Saint HelenaIsland, • Parris Helena Island’s southern Island, Island, • Pritchards coast, Island, • Hilton Head • Hilton Island’s northern, Head northestern, and Island, southwestern coasts, • Daufuskie Island, Fort Pulaski is located east of Savannah. During the War Through education the experiment began to change life in the Sea Islands. On St. Helena Charlotte Forten, a free woman, joined Laura Towne and Ellen Murray to teach at Penn School in 1862. The school expanded in 1864, when Penn purchased 50 acres from freedman Hastings Gantt. Over 100 other schools, helped by charities, opened soon after. Freedpeople pooled savings earned through wage labor to buy 10- to 20-acre plots of land. They created families, homes, and communities with churches, banks, and businesses. Ellen Murray UNC LIBRARY / PENN SCHOOL PAPERS UNC LIBRARY / PENN SCHOOL PAPERS Charlotte Forten Occupied Owing to the continued presence of its ships in Port Royal Sound and the adjacent rivers, the US military maintained a secure outpost in coastal South Carolina from 1862. South Carolina Volunteer Regiment of the US Army in the fall of 1862. They were based at Camp Saxton, the former John J. Smith Plantation on Port Royal. One reporter in the paper New South declared the occupation “not merely military.” Business people and government officials mixed with the military, press, reformers, and abolitionists. Missionaries, mostly women, set up schools where freedpeople began to conquer illiteracy, forced on them by state law. Under the provisions of the Militia Act of 1862, formerly enslaved men began to join the 1st Other barriers to equality fell in the occupied Sea Islands. Soon after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, over 16,000 acres, on which the Treasury foreclosed when absentee owners failed to pay their taxes, became available for purchase by “heads of families of the African race.” The US government also reserved land for farm schools and other institutions to help people transition to life after slavery. Changes set in motion here, called the Port Royal Experiment, anticipated national Reconstruction. U S Army–controlled territories in 1861 Major U S Army defense In May 1862 Robert Smalls piloted a Confederate ship out of Charleston Harbor and delivered it to the US military. Smalls used the cash reward for this “prize of war” to purchase the house of his former enslaver in Beaufort. Transformed Laura Towne National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior The Beaufort District elected Smalls a delegate to the convention that wrote a new South Carolina Constitution, to the state House of Representatives, and to five terms in the US Congress. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, BRADY HANDY COLLECTION After the War In the eight months after Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865 and before the next US Congress convened, President Andrew Johnson pardoned many former Confederates, who then took control of civil governments in the South. Johnson’s conciliatory policies ended sales of property abandoned in the war. The South Carolina state government passed discriminatory Black Codes. In December 1865, though, the states ratified the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, abolishing slavery except as punishment for a crime. A year of tragedy and dispiriting reversals for freedpeople ended on a note of hope. Disfranchised In 1870 the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution extended the vote to all male citizens. Former Confederates resented the new political and social order, which they felt the federal government had imposed on them. To terrorize Black people and limit their rights, they created groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the South Carolina Red Shirts. To replicate enslavement under a new name, they implemented convict leasing. The pendulum of power swung away from federal authority and toward the states. By 1895 South Carolina had a new state constitution that disfranchised Black voters. The 39th US Congress opened in January 1866. The Republican majority, led by Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, sympathized with the freedpeople. It overturned the Black Codes and required South Carolina to rewrite its constitution, including freedpeople in the process. The resulting state constitution of 1868 created a public education system and removed statutes that prevented Black people from voting. Self-advocacy by freedpeople helped effect a nationwide change when the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified. It guaranteed citizenship and equal protection of the law to all people born in the United States. Reignited Reconstruction ended almost everywhere by 1900. Despite the gains and losses, the Jim Crow years, and the struggle for civil rights, St. Helena’s people held fast to their land and history. Penn School and Brick Baptist Church, long open to the community, opened their doors wider. Penn School evolved by midcentury into a center where people came to learn life skills like reading tax forms, but also organizing for civil rights. Southern Christian Leadership Conference members met in Penn’s classrooms in the 1950s and 1960s. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was among those who came here. He sometimes stayed at the center’s Gantt Cottage with his young family. The struggle for equality continued, as national civil rights leaders built on the work begun here a century earlier. In 2017, thanks in large part to the efforts of Sea Island residents, Reconstruction Era National Historical Park was established to tell the story of those who struggled to create “a more perfect Union.” At the 1963 March on Washington, citizens demanded the promises of Reconstruction for future generations. FOTOSEARCH /STRINGER Descendants of Sea Islands freedpeople continue to live on land their ancestors purchased here in the early 1860s. Photo after 1863. Hastings Gantt AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY / JULIAN A. DIMOCK Harriet Tubman took part in a military raid in 1863 that freed over 700 people enslaved on rice plantations along the Combahee River. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS / BENJAMIN POWELSON LIBRARY OF CONGRESS / TIMOTHY H. O’SULLIVAN GETTY IMAGES / PAUL SLADE Visiting Reconstruction Era’s Key Sites U S Highway 21 runs southeast from Beaufort over Beaufort River, where it becomes Sea Islands Parkway and runs through Frogmore. State road 802 runs from the north to intersect with Sea Islands Parkway. In the early 1900s Penn School added agricultural studies to the curriculum. Students could learn two-mule plowing, used for row crops hauled to local markets by wagon and consumed at family tables. Beaufort, Port Royal, and Camp Station are located on Port Royal Island. UNC LIBRARY / PENN SCHOOL PAPERS Reconstruction Era National Historical Park has many partners, and also manages Reconstruction Era National Historic Network. Learn more about the network at www.nps. gov/reconstruction. More Information Reconstruction Era National Historical Park 706 Craven St. Beaufort, SC 29902 www.nps.gov/reer 843-962-0039 Accessibility We strive to make facilities, services, and programs accessible to all. For information go to a visitor center, call, ask a ranger, or check the park website. Follow us on social media. Emergencies call 911 For firearms regulations check the park website. Ladys Island Drive connects Ribaut Road and Sea Islands Parkway after crossing Beaufort River. Ribaut Road runs south from U S Highway 21 then east over Battery Creek to Ladys Island Drive. Penn Center, Darrah Hall, and Brick Baptist Church are located on Saint Helena Island. Use the official NPS App to guide your visit. Reconstruction Era National Historical Park is one of over 400 parks in the National Park System. To npf_black.pdf 1 8/26/22 learn more about national parks, visit www.nps.gov. 12:33 PM Join the park community. www.nationalparks.org IGPO:2024—427-085/83191 Last updated 2024 Gullah people create sweetgrass baskets that reflect their ancestors’ traditions. LEFT, WASTEBASKET BY LEOLA WRIGHT—AVERY RESEARCH CENTER FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE, COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON; RIGHT, EGG BASKET BY ELIZABETH MAZYCK—AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Beaufort Penn Center National Historic Landmark District National Historic Landmark District, St. Helena Island BACKGROUND PHOTO © LAMAR NIX ALL IMAGES—NPS UNLESS OTHERWISE CREDITED Camp Saxton Port Royal Old Beaufort Firehouse, built ca. 1912, was donated to the park by a local family. Memorial bust of Robert Smalls, Tabernacle Baptist Church, a short walk from the firehouse. Begin your exploration of the Reconstruction era at the park visitor center in the Old Beaufort Firehouse. You’ll find exhibits, publications, restrooms, and information about park programs. Parking is limited. Take a walking tour of the surrounding Beaufort National Historic Landmark District before you go to Penn Center and Camp Saxton. Visit the park website for current hours. U S Highway 21 runs from U S Highway 17 and Interstate 95 into Beaufort National Historic Landmark District fromBoundary the Street northeast, where it becomes Boundary Street. intersects with Carteret Street, Congress Street, Green which is also Street, Washington Street, Highway 21 and Duke Street, Prince Street, runs south toward King Street, North Street, Penn Center. Craven Street, and Port Republic Street run east and West Street, Scott Street, Carteret west, parallel with one Street, New Street, and East Street run another from north to south. north and south, parallel with one another from east to west and intersecting with most of the other streets on a grid. Bay Street runs from the southwestern to the southsoutheastern side of the district to U S Highway 21. The Reconstruction Era National Historical Park Visitor Center and The Beaufort River Beaufort History Museum surrounds the district are located on Craven on the southern, Street. eastern and part of the northern sides. St. Helena residents built Darrah Hall (above), a community and recreation center, in the 1890s. © FLIP SCHULKE ARCHIVES Capers Creek is located west off the west side of the district. There is an area of approximately 1 mile/1.6 kilometers of unpaved road that runs north and then east from the Retreat House. Brick Baptist Church, built 1855 (top). Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (left) stayed in Gantt Cottage (above) while at Penn Center. U S Highway 21 runs into Brickthe Baptist Church the district from is located in the north and becomes northeastern edge of Martin Luther King Junior Drive.the district near Martin Luther King Junior Drive. The York W. Bailey Museum, Welcome Center, and parking are located west of Martin Luther Darrah Hall and a King Junior Drive. parking area are located southwest of Capers Creek Nature Trail runs the museum and west from Darrah Hall then welcome center. northwest to the Retreat House. On January 1, 1863, hundreds of people joined the emancipation celebration at Camp Saxton, using a dock built over the ruins of Fort Frederick. Stop at the reconstructed Pinckney-Porter’s Chapel (above) for information about how to visit Camp Saxton and colonial-era Fort Frederick. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Pinckney-Porter’s Chapel Visitor Contact Station is located near Pinckney Boulevard. There is parking. Pinckney A walking Boulevard route runs runs Stuart Towne from Lane Pinckney alongside eastwalking also intersectsBoulevard the with Old Shelland then route to the south along Road, from the park Old Shell Road west. Fort entrance on to Old FortOld Fort Frederick Heritage Road. Preserve is located Road. There east of the is parking. entrance. Camp Sexton Way, located south of the park, intersects with Fort Frederick Circle, which intersects with Old Shell Road. Beaufort River is located along the eastern side of the park boundary. Fort Frederick Ruins are located on the southeastern side of the park. There is parking and a pavilion.