BLACK TEACHERS AND RACIAL UPLIFT AFTER THE CIVIL WAR On November 7, 1861, the Union army captured the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina. White plantation owners fled, abandoning homes, cotton fields, and ten thousand slaves. When word of the Yankee takeover reached the mainland, more slaves arrived, runaways from parts south. By February, twelve thousand black people had gathered on the islands, at Hilton Head, St. Helena, and Port Royal. There was a lot of potential labor, and a lot of cotton, too, of a finer, more valuable quality than the cotton grown on the mainland. The U.S. Treasury Department dispatched Edward Pierce, a thirty-two-year-old Massachusetts lawyer, to the islands to assess how they might be used in the war effort. He reported back that he was more impressed with the character of the former slaves than he thought he’d be; they harvested the cotton in their masters’ absence, and were committed Christians, honest and industrious. Those who had escaped slavery had a “courage … worthy of heroes.”
