Attain Rehearsal For Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment Generated By Willie Lee Rose Available In Ebook

section by Lee Rose discussing how in post Civil War southern america, getting and arranging private purchase of land by northerners from former slaves' owners of Sea Island, Georgia, to start private enterprises to get freed men to working for wages was an art in carving and a science of pure politics.
The experiment of Sea Island's contours has me thinking about how mindblowing is the argument that slavery died out mainly because wage labor was forcefully more profitable.
But getting from there to here, now that is some kind of test and fortitude on that li'l Georgia sunpatch.
. This is the best book about the Port Royal Experiment, My personal interest in it is the account of Gen, Rufus Saxton, our son's namesake, and a greatgreatgreat uncle of Scott's, An amazing book that chronicles the South Carolina Sea Islands and what became known as the "Port Royal Experiment" during the Civil War.


When the islands were captured early in the war, abolitionists both in and outside government saw it as a perfect opportunity to prove to the world that exslaves could be made into productive freelaboring citizens.


In this small area, in just theseyears, one can already make out many of the tensions and battle lines over black rights and government assistance to blacks that would

define American politics for the nextyears.
Here we see the desire to give charity and assistance along with concerns over dependency, complaints and even military orders concerning the instability of the black family, racial tensions between resurgent black leaders and the paternalistic whites who hoped to maintain control, even cheap housing for newly freed slaves to be given on their newacres this is where the idea ofacres and a mule originated, through a terse order from General Sherman.


Not surprisingly, many of the charityminded whites succumbed to the "Planation Bitters" when they discovered blacks would not act like New England farm hands, and many resorted to mendacious and avaricious tactics to maintain the profit margins on the plantations they worked as supervisors for the government.
The conflicts of interest were legion, but few at the time seemed to recognize them, The result was often disaster and disappointment for blacks who received broken promises time and time again.
They were rounded up like dogs to serve in the army, they were threatened with pistols to keep them at work on the farm, and many had their promised land title taken out from under them and returned to the Southern planters after President Johnson came to power.


I heard about this book from people in Beaufort, South Carolina when I went to draw some of the buildings for my architectural research job including the building of the black US Congressman Robert Smalls, who bought his former masters house at tax auction and is a prominent player in this book.
It was hearitly recommended, and I see why, This is the wellwritten and aptlynamed story of early attempts at transforming former slaves into their own selfsufficient community.
It's also a great example of what happens when we go looking for things historical in our local areas.
As significant as this was, it's not something widely shared in the context of the bigger Civil War picture.
In November, the Union Navy sailed into the Port Royal Sound in the South Carolina Lowcountry and secured the surrounding Sea Islands down to Savannah.
Following them was a contingent of Northern missionaries, primarily from New York and Boston, who came to educated and reorganize the labor force among the newlyliberated slaves.
The book chronicles the realities and challenges of such an ambition project, as well as the differing views of what freedom meant in terms of education, labor, politics, and social norms.
The seeds planted here would become what the title implies a rehearsal of sorts for later Reconstruction policies enacted after the official end of the war.
Fromuntil Reconstruction began, the Sea Island freedmen enjoyed a relatively brief period of considerable autonomy compared to their former situation, one which wasn't shared by fellow slaves still under immediate Confederate control.
One of the most intriguing things to me was the fact this pocket of freedom was occuring within a few miles of Confederateheld Charleston not far away, which is where many of the white landowners fled as the Union Navy approached.
Eventually, though, the Sea Island freedmen suffered the same fate as other freedmen after Reconstruction was abandoned beginning in the mids.
It's a fascinating story, and one that should be morewidely known, American history Very interesting and well written account of the beginnings of Reconstruction in South Carolina, Not something you'd read just for funit's not the type of historical book based on following a few compelling figures in a novelistic sense, over a period of history.
But I'm deep into research for a novel that takes place in and around Port Royal during the Civil War, and it's hard to find a better source than this one.


However, more than just a reference book, this gives an unusual insight into elements of the Civil War, slavery, and its aftermath that are often ignoredwhat happened to freed blacks on plantations during the war in this case, in Union occupied South Carolina, and what happened during this remarkable "experiment" with black freedom.
This book shows the complexities of the abolitionist movement, and how they finally met up with the practicalities of freedom for black slaves.
It didn't always go well, The patterns seen in this time and place end up have a deep relevance to the rest of reconstruction and beyond, both in terms of race relations including numerous betrayals of the black freedmen by their government and also the people who claimed they were trying to help them, philanthropy, racial politics, even the white Southern relationship to government and taxation.


The book is meticulously researched, and introduces characters and the resources needed to research them that could lead to a hundred biographies, novels and films.
If you're interested in understanding the Civil War beyond the battlefield, this is a great book to explore.
Just seven months into the Civil War, a Union fleet sailed into South Carolinas Port Royal Sound, landed a ground force, and then made its way upriver to Beaufort.
Planters and farmers fled before the invaders, allowing virtually all their possessions, including ten thousand slaves, to fall into Union hands.
Rehearsal for Reconstruction, winner of the Allan Nevins Prize, the Francis Parkman Prize, and the Charles S.
Sydnor Prize, is historian Willie Lee Roses chronicle of change in the Sea Island region from its capture inthrough Reconstruction.
With epic sweep, Rose demonstrates how Port Royal constituted a stage upon which a dress rehearsal for the Souths postwar era was acted out.
A historian of slavery and the Civil War era, Willie Lee Rose was a professor of history at Johns Hopkins university fromuntil her retirement in.
A graduate of Mary Washington College, she earned her Ph, D. from Johns Hopkins University in, where she studied under C, Vann Woodward. .