“NOTES FROM SOUTH CAROLINA

… Harriet Ware has published a volume of ‘Letters from Port Royal’ giving her daily experiences on St. Helen Island at this time, and Henry Wentworth Higginson also published his daily written while commanding the first black regiment, made up of negroes from this section, so we have  pretty vivid picture of those times and parts.

Laura M. Towne, who founded the Penn School, came from Philadelphia with the superintendents mentioned above and began at once a labor of love among the slaves which continued, with the assistance of Ellen Murrary, for forty years, as their monuments at Frogmore show.

Harriet Ware says, ‘The history of the Department for the North Carolina Army (composed of northern white troops) under General Hunter, might read:  “The forts were taken, one thousand odd children were taught to read and one negro regiment enlisted.”

‘The northern soldiers were allowed to go wherever they pleased from Port Royal, consequently they poured over our end of St. Helena Island from Land’s End, confusion coming with them.  They cheated, they plundered, they threatened lives, stole boats, poultry, hogs, money and other property; they paid for dinners with worthless Richmond money, taking good bills in exchange.  They behaved like marauders in an enemy’s country, and disgraced the name of man, American or soldier, and these were soldiers from the 24th Mass. Regiment.’

Elsewhere she records (First Month 4, 1863) her efforts at teaching the slaves in whose behalf she had left her home in the north.

‘Now they work and then they stop–sometimes before they begin.  … I have a blackboard with numerals and figures and the second line of the multiplication table, but they make sorry work trying to copy the figures on their slates.  I let them use these every day, however, for they must learn by gradually growing familiar with the use of a pencil not to use it like a hoe.  There are furrows in the slated made by their digging in which you might plant beene seed, if not cotton.’…”

Reference Data:

The Friend, Vol. 85, Fourth Month 11, 1912, page 327