Excerpt from The Freedmen of South-Carolina: Some Account of Their Appearance, Character, Condition, and Peculiar Customs
By the time you have seen all this, you begin to lose faith in the person who assured you that the negroes of Port Royal are an idle, dissolute, worthless set of creatures, who are supported at an enor mous expense by an abolition government, etc., etc. You see, on the contrary, that black men are usefully employed in the navy, in the army, and as laborers by the Quartermaster’s Department. When you have’ looked around a little farther, you will find that in yet other useful Work not only black men, but black women and children, are busily and profitably e’n’gaged.
There are at this time within our lines in south-carolina about twelve thousand colored people, as absolutely free men and women as the same population of whites in any military department where martial law is strictly enforced. A census of the freedmen has just been taken, but the returns are not yet all at hand. Accord ing to a census taken on the first of May, 1862, there were then in south-carolina, on the plantations within our lines nine thousand and fifty. To this number have been added since, five hundred refugees from Santee; five hundred from St. Simon’s. Island, and about four hundred from other parts. There are besides, accord ing to the more recent census, one thousand seven hundred and eighty freed people living in Beaufort.
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