It is given to the people of this country and time, could they realise it, to make a new chapter of human experience. The past may suggest, but it can do little either in directing or deterring. There is nothing in the gloomy vaticinations of Tocqueville, wise and benevolent as he is, which should be permitted to darken our future. The mediæval antagonisms of races, when Christianity threw but a partial light over mankind, and before commerce had unfolded the harmony of interests among people of diverse origin or condition, determine no laws which will fetter the richer and more various development of modern life. Nor do the results of emancipation in the West Indies, more or less satisfactory as they may be, afford any measure of the progress which opens before our enfranchised masses. The insular and contracted life of the colonies, cramped also as they were by debt and absenteeism, has no parallel in the grand currents of thought and activity ever sweeping through the continent on which our problem is to be solved.
In the light of these views, the attempt shall be made to report truthfully upon the freedmen at Port Royal. A word, however, as to the name. Civilization, in its career, may often be traced in the nomenclatures of successive periods. These people were first called contrabands at Fortress Monroe; but at Port Royal, where they were next introduced to us in any considerable number, they were generally referred to as freedmen. These terms are milestones in our progress; and they are yet to be lost in the better and more comprehensive designation of citizens, or, when discrimination is convenient, citizens of African descent.
The enterprise for the protection and development of the freedmen at Port Royal has won its way to the regard of mankind. The best minds of Europe, as well as the best friends of the United States, like Cairnes and Gasparin, have testified much interest in its progress. An English periodical of considerable merit noticed at some length "Mr. Pierce's Ten Thousand Clients." In Parliament, Earl Russell noted it in its incipient stage, as a reason why England should not intervene in American affairs. The "Revue des Deux Mondes," in a recent number, characterizes the colony as "that small pacific army, far more important in the history of civilization than all the military expeditions despatched from time to time since the commencement of the civil war."
No little historical interest covers the region to which this account belongs. Explorations of the coast now known as that of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida, involving the rival pretensions of Spain and France, were made in the first half of the sixteenth century. They were conducted by Ponce de Leon, Vasquez, Verrazani, and Soto, in search of the fountain of perpetual youth, or to extend empire by right of discovery. But no permanent settlement by way of colony or garrison was attempted until 1562.
In that year,—the same in which he drew his sword for his faith, and ten years before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, in which he fell the most illustrious victim,—Admiral Coligny, the great Protestant chief, anxious to found beyond the seas a refuge for persecuted Huguenots, fitted out the expedition of Jean Ribault, which, after a voyage of over three months across the ocean and northward along the coast, cast anchor on May 27th in the harbor of Port Royal, and gave it the name which it retains to this day. That year was also to be ever memorable for another and far different enterprise, which was destined to be written in dark and perpetual lines on human history. Then it was that John [pg 299] Hawkins sailed for Africa in quest of the first cargo of negroes ever brought to the New World. The expedition of Ribault was the first visit of Europeans to Port Royal or to any part of South Carolina, and the garrison left by him was the first settlement under their auspices ever made on this continent north of Mexico. There is not space or need to detail here the mutiny and suffering of this military colony, their abandonment of the post, the terrible voyage homeward, or the perseverance of Coligny in his original purpose. Nor is it within the compass of this narrative to recount the fortunes of the second garrison, which was founded on the St. John's, the visit of John Hawkins in 1565 with timely relief, the return of Ribault from France and his sad fate, the ferocity of Melendez against all heretic Frenchmen, and the avenging chivalry of Dominic de Gourges. The student is baffled in attempts to fix localities for the deeds and explorations of this period, even with the help of the several accounts and the drawings of Le Moyne; and, besides, these later vicissitudes did not involve any permanent occupation as far north as Port Royal, that region having been abandoned by the French, and being then visited by the Spanish only for trade or adventure.
Some merchants of Barbados, in 1663, sent William Hilton and other commissioners to Florida, then including Port Royal, to explore the country with reference to an emigration thither. Hilton's Narration, published in London the year after, mentions St. Ellens as one of the points visited, meaning St. Helena, but probably including the Sea Islands under that name. The natives were found to speak many Spanish words, and to be familiar enough with the report of guns not to be alarmed by it. The commissioners, whose explorations were evidently prompted by motives of gain, close a somewhat glowing description of the country by saying, "And we could wish that all they that want a happy settlement of our English nation were well transported thither."
Hitherto England had borne no part in exploring this region. But, relieved of her civil wars by the Restoration, she began to seek colonial empire on the southern coast of North America. In 1663, Charles II. granted a charter to Clarendon, Monk, Shaftsbury,—each famous in the conflicts of those times,—and to their associates, as proprietors of Carolina. The genius of John Locke, more fitted for philosophy than affairs, devised a constitution for the colony,—an idle work, as it proved. In 1670, the first emigrants, under Governor William Sayle, arrived at Port Royal, with the purpose to remain there; but, disturbed probably with apprehensions of Spanish incursions from Florida, they removed to the banks of the Ashley, and, after another change of site, founded Charleston.
In 1682, a colony from Scotland under Lord Cardross was founded at Port Royal, but was driven away four years later by the Spanish. No permanent settlement of the Beaufort district appears to have succeeded until 1700. This district is divided into four parishes, St. Peter's, St. Luke's, St. Helena, and Prince William, being fifty-eight miles long and thirty-two broad, and containing 1,224,960 acres. St. Helena parish includes the islands of St. Helena, Ladies, Port Royal, Paris, and a few smaller islands, which, together with Hilton Head, make the district occupied by our forces. The largest and most populous of these islands is St. Helena, being fifteen miles long and six or seven broad, containing fifty plantations and three thousand negroes, and perhaps more since the evacuation of Edisto. Port Royal is two-thirds or three-quarters the size of St. Helena, Ladies half as large, and Hilton Head one-third as large. Paris, or Parry, has five plantations, and Coosaw, Morgan, Cat, Cane, and Barnwell have each one or two. Beaufort is the largest town in the district of that name, and the only one at Port Royal in our possession. Its population, black and white, in time of peace may have been [pg 300] between two and three thousand. The first lots were granted in 1717. Its Episcopal church was built in 1720. Its library was instituted in 1802, had increased in 1825 to six or eight hundred volumes, and when our military occupation began contained about thirty-five hundred.
The origin of the name Port Royal, given to a harbor at first and since to an island, has already been noted. The name of St. Helena, applied to a sound, a parish, and an island, originated probably with the Spaniards, and was given by them in tribute to Saint Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, whose day in the calendar is August 18th. Broad River is the equivalent of La Grande, which was given by Ribault. Hilton Head may have been derived from Captain Hilton, who came from Barbados. Coosaw is the name of a tribe of Indians. Beaufort is likely to have been so called for Henry, Duke of Beauford, one of the lord proprietors, while Carolina was a province of Great Britain.