s of their heroes. No Vandyck may delight
to warm his canvas with their forms. How many or how few astronomers
like Banneker, chieftains like Toussaint, orators like Douglass they may
have, it is not worth while to conjecture. It is better to dismiss these
fanciful discussions. 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.

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 mediaeval 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