means, at their
disposal, had within the same period of time got about thirty-eight
hundred laborers at steady work on fifteen thousand acres of corn,
potatoes, and cotton. For the first time in our history educated
Northern men had taken charge of the Southern negro, had learned to
know his nature, his status, his history, first-hand, in the cabin and
the field. And though subsequently other Southern territory was put
into the hands of Northern men and women to manage in much the same
fashion, it was not in the nature of things that these conditions
should ever be exactly reproduced. The question whether or not the
freedman would work without the incentive of the lash was settled once
for all by the "Port Royal Experiment."

Of the many thousand letters that must have been written by these
people to their Northern homes, those of one small group only are
represented by the extracts here printed. The writers were New
Englanders and ardent anti-slavery people; W. C. G. and C. P. W. were
Harvard men just out of college, H. W. was a sister of the latter. A
few of the later letters were written by two other Massachusetts men,
T. E. R., a Yale graduate of 1859, and F. H., who remained on the
islands longer than the three just mentioned. All five are still
living. Richard Soule, Jr., now dead for many years was an older man,
a teacher, a person of great loveliness of character and justice of
mind. The principal figure in the letters, Edward S. Philbrick of
Brookline, who died in 1889, was in one sense the principal figure in
the Sea Island situation. He began by contributing a thousand dollars
to the work and volunteering his services on the ground, where he was
given charge by Mr. Pierce of three plantations, including the largest
on the islands; being a person of some means, with an established
reputation as an engineer and a very considerable business experience,
he was from the first prominent among the volunteers. When, in the
following year, he became personally and financially responsible for a
dozen plantations, this prominence was increased a hundredfold. Thus
he found himself the victim of the vituperation hurled by many
Northern friends of the blacks at the "professed philanthropists" who
went to Port Royal to "make their fortunes" out of the labor of the
"poor negro." The integrity of Mr. Philbrick's motives stands out in
his letters beyond the possibility of misinterpretation. This record
is a witness of what so