After the Battle of Port Royal Sound on Nov. 7, 1861, the victorious Union forces discovered that all of the plantation owners and their families had fled, leaving thousands of slaves behind. Many of the military officers tried to organize help for the abandoned slaves by requesting government aid. General Hunter's
solution was quicker, more expedient, and far less attuned to the
anti-abolitionist sentiments still prevalent in much of the Union. He simply
emancipated the former slaves. In an order, issued from Hilton Head on 9 May
1862, he wrote:
The three States of Georgia,
Florida, and South Carolina, comprising the Military Department of the South,
having deliberately declared themselves no longer under the protection of the
United States of America, and having taken up arms against said United States,
it became a military necessity to declare martial law. This was accordingly
done the 25th day of April, 1862. Slavery and martial law in a free country are
altogether incompatible; the persons in these three States, Georgia, Florida,
and South Carolina, heretofore held as slaves, are therefore declared forever
free.
Both the North and the South regarded the proclamation with
disapproval. The New York Times
dismissed it as absurd: "His declaring freedom to all the slaves in three
States, when he has no power to free a single one outside of his camp, is
regarded in Washington as an act of stultification highly discreditable to any
one holding the rank of General, supposed to have ordinary intelligence."
On St.
Helena Island, the missionaries were as surprised as anyone else to learn of
the emancipation, and their reaction reflected their ambivalence toward the
former slaves' preparation for independence. Philbrick did not think that the
emancipation decree was a very good idea, and he seemed to expect Hunter to
lose his job over it. As for the blacks, he called the effect of the
proclamation " . . . inconsiderable. They don't hear of it, to begin with,
and if they did they wouldn't care for it." On the day the emancipation was announced,
however, Harriet Ware overheard one of the house servants tell someone,
"Don't call me 'Joe'; my name is Mr. Jenkins." It was a lovely expression of what freedom
might mean to former slaves, but the reality was something quite different.
Hunter
immediately followed up his proclamation with an intensified drive to recruit
soldiers from the newly emancipated slaves. On Sunday, 11 May, "Capt.
Hazard Stevens arrived at Pope's Plantation on St. Helena Island, bearing an
order from General Hunter notifying the plantation that on Monday morning 'all
colored men between 18 and 45 capable of bearing arms shall be taken to Hilton
Head'—no explanation."
Tomorrow, we'll look at Lincoln's response to this premature act.
