gotten. The enterprise was new and strange, and it
was not easy to predict its future. Success or defeat might be in store
for us; and we could only trust in God that our strength would be equal
to our responsibilities. As the colonists approached the shores of South
Carolina, they were addressed by the agent in charge, who told them the
little he had learned of their duties, enjoined patience and humanity,
impressed on them the greatness of their work, the results of which were
to cheer or dishearten good men, to settle, perhaps, one way or the
other, the social problem of the age,--assuring them that never did a
vessel bear a colony on a nobler mission, not even the Mayflower, when
she conveyed the Pilgrims to Plymouth, that it would be a poorly written
history which should omit their individual names, and that, if faithful
to their trust, there would come to them the highest of all recognitions
ever accorded to angels or to men, in this life or the next,--"Inasmuch
as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto Me."

This first delegation of superintendents and teachers were distributed
during the first fortnight after their arrival at Beaufort, and at its
close they had all reached their appointed posts. They took their
quarters in the deserted houses of the planters. 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. Our operations were, therefore, not
interfered with by landed proprietors who were loyal or pretended to be
so. The negroes had, in the mean time, been without persons to guide and
care for them, and had been exposed to the careless and conflicting talk
of soldiers who chanced to meet them. They were also brought in
connection with some _employes_ of the Government, engaged in the
collection of cotton found upon the plantations, none of whom were doing
anything for their education, and most of whom were in favor of leasing
the plantations and the negroes upon them as _adscripti gleboe_ looking
forward to their restoration to their masters at the close of the war.
They were uncertain as to the intentions of the Yankees, and were
wondering at the confusion, as they called it. They were beginning to
plant corn in their patches, but were disinclined to plant cotton,
regarding it as a badge of servitude. No schools had been opened, except
one at Beaufor