Meheinz's List: MAHG research

• • Questions of the Port Royal Experiment
• Will the people of African descent work for a living?   and the other is, Will they fight for their freedom?
• To vindicate   their title to a fair chance in the world as a free people, it is   sufficient, and alone sufficient, that it appear to reasonable minds   that they are in good and evil very much like the rest of mankind,   and that they are endowed in about the same degree with the conservative   and progressive elements of character common to ordinary humanity.
• “Mr. Pierce’s Ten Thousand Clients.”
• “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.”
• 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 Hawkins sailed for   Africa in quest of the first cargo of negroes ever brought to the   New World.
• 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.
• The Sea Islands are formed by the intersection of the creeks and   arms of the sea. They have a uniform level, are without any stones,   and present a rather monotonous and uninteresting scenery, spite   of the raptures of French explorers. The creeks run up into the   islands at numerous points, affording facilities for transportation   by fiats and boats to the buildings which are usually near them.   The soil is of a light, sandy mould, and yields in the best seasons   a very moderate crop, say fifteen bushels of corn and one hundred   or one hundred and thirty pounds of ginned cotton to the acre, —   quite different from the plantations in Mississippi and Texas, where   an acre produces five or six hundred pounds. The soil is not rich   enough for the cultivated grasses, and one finds but little turf.   The coarse saline grasses, gathered in stacks, furnish the chief   material for manure. The long-fibred cotton peculiar to the region   is the result of the climate, which is affected by the action of   the salt water upon the atmosphere by means of the creeks which   permeate the land in all directions. The seed of this cotton, planted   on the upland, will produce in a few years the cotton of coarser   texture; and the seed of the latter, planted on the islands, will   in a like period produce the finer staple. The Treasury Department   secured eleven hundred thousand pounds from the islands occupied   by our forces, including Edisto, being the crop, mostly unginned,   and gathered in storehouses, when our military occupation began.
• The deserted houses were generally found strewn with religious   periodicals, mainly Baptist magazines. This characteristic of Southern   life has been else where observed in the progress of our army. Occasionally   some hook denouncing slavery as criminal and ruinous was found among   those left behind.
• On the plantation where my own quarters   were was a woman who had been so beaten when approaching the trials   of maternity as to crush out the life of the unborn child. But this   planter had one daughter who looked with horror on the scenes of   which she was the unwilling witness. She declared to her parents   and sisters that it was hell to live in such a place. She was accustomed   to advise the negroes how best to avoid being whipped. When the   war began, she assured them that the story of the masters that the   Yankees were going to send them to Cuba was all a lie. Surely a   kind Providence will care for this noble girl!
• Educational Commission
• Freedmen’s   Relief Association
• Port Royal Relief Committee
• steam-transport Atlantic
• These had   all left on the arrival of our army, only four white men, citizens   of South Carolina, remaining, and none of those being slaveholders,   except one, who had only two or three slaves.
• Brigadier General Isaac I. Stevens
• William S. Clark
• Francis E. Barnard
• gospel of freedom, — always, however,   enforcing the duties of industry and self-restraint. He was never   sad, hut always buoyant and trustful.
• Read his published journal,
• Samuel D. Phillips
• Daniel Bowe
• Brigadier General   Rufus Saxton,
• The slave is   unknown to all, even to himself, while the bondage lasts.
• an aged negro, Caesar by name, not   less than one hundred years old, who had left children in Africa,   when stolen away.
• Old Simon
• Don Carlos
• Aunt Phillis

• Only in one case   could I find an inscription, and that was in a burial-place on Ladies   Island. There was a board at the head of the grave, shaped something   like an ordinary gravestone, about three feet high and six inches   wide. The inscription was as follows —

   

  Old Jiw
    de Part his
    Life on the
    2 of WAY
    Re st frow
    LAUER

   

  On the foot-board were these words: —

   

  We ll
    d own

   

  The rude artist was Kit, the son of the old man. He can read, and   also write a little, and, like his deceased father, is a negro preacher.   He said that he used to carry his father in his arms in his old   age, — that the old man had no pain, and, as the son expressed   it, “ sunk in years.”
• There were some superstitions   among the people, perhaps of African origin, which the teachers   had detected, such as, a belief in hats as evil spirits, and in   a kind of witchcraft which only certain persons can cure. They have   a superstition, that, when you take up and remove a sleeping child,   you must call its spirit, else it will cry, on awaking, until you   have taken it back to the same place and invoked its spirit. They   believe that turning an alligator on his back will bring rain; and   they will not talk about one when in a boat, lest a storm should   thereby be brought on.
• American Missionary Association.

• Whittier’s new song, written expressly for this school,   the closing stanzas of which are,—

   

  “The very oaks are greener clad,
    The waters brighter smile;
    Oh, never shone a day so glad
    On sweet St. Helen’s Isle!

   

  “For none in all the world before
    Were ever glad as we, —
    We ‘re free on Carolina’s shore,
    We ‘re all at home and free
• One of the teachers of this school is an accomplished woman from   Philadelphia. Another is from Newport, Rhode Island, where she had   prepared herself for this work by benevolent labors in teaching   poor children. The third is a young woman of African descent, of   olive complexion, finely cultured, and attuned to all beautiful   sympathies, of gentle address, and, what was specially noticeable,   not possessed with an overwrought consciousness of her race.
• Ned Loyd White, a colored   man, who had picked up clandestinely a knowledge of reading while   still a slave.
• Ned,   who is about forty or forty five years old, and Uncle Cyrus, a man   of seventy, who also could read, gathered one hundred and fifty   children into two schools, and taught them as best they could for   five months until teachers were provided by the societies. Ned has   since received a donation from one of the societies, and is now   regularly employed on a salary.

• A teacher in Beaufort put these questions, to which answers were   given in a loud tone by the whole school: —

   

  “What country do you live in?”
    “United States.”
    “What State?”
    “South Carolina.”
    “What island?”
    “Port Royal.”
    “What town?”
    “Beaufort.”
    “Who is your Governor?”
    “General Saxton.”
    “Who is your President?”
    “Abraham Lincoln.”
    “What has he done for you?”
    “He ‘s freed us.”
• The laborers, during their first year under   the new system, have acquired the idea of ownership, and of the   security of wages, and have come to see that labor and slavery are   not the same thing.
• tax-sales
• “She ‘s the best hand I got”; and if Celia is   only as smart with her hoe as I know her to be with her tongue,
• The instinct for land — to have one spot on earth where a   man may stand, and whence no human being can of right drive him   — is one of the most conservative elements of our nature;   and a people who have it in any fair degree will never be nomads   or vagabonds.
• Friend   Hunn,
• Captain Hooper
• Colonel Montgomery
• Wentworth Higginson
• Fortress Monroe
• • Great descriptions of life and people!!!!!!

44 more annotations...

• I discovered that the Rail Road overseer, instead of treating his men as they had a right to be treated, abused them much as if they were slaves and gave to white men $25 for doing the work that black men were required to do for $15.
• A boy of twelve years old came to my office a few days since, battered and bruised, his flesh lacerated by the cruel blows of his former master, who had driven him off, helpless and hungry, to find food and shelter as best he could.