November 6, 1861. The Montgomery Advertiser [Alabama] declared on November 6, "The institution [of slavery] is a tower of strength to the South, particularly at the present crisis, and our enemies will be likely to find that the 'moral cancer' about which their orators are so fond of prating, is really one of the most effective weapons employed against the Union by the South."
This is precisely the rationale that Lincoln would use in September 1862 when he would issue the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which would go into effect on January 1, 1863.
November 7, 1861. "A huge combined land-and-sea expedition . . . attacked, captured, and began to secure the Hilton Head-Port Royal area, between Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina."
It remained in Union hands for the rest of the war and "became an important base for coaling and supplying U.S. ships blockading the Southern coast.
Port Royal also became a testing ground for educational and agricultural programs to assist freed slaves, some ten thousand of whom had been left behind when their masters fled inland. . . . Northern missionaries and teachers soon began arriving in the Union enclave, determined to establish schools. . . ."
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View of the Battle of Port Royal from the Confederate heights by Rossiter Johnson. Click on image or more information.
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SOURCE
The American Civil War: 365 Days, Margaret E. Wagner, ed., pp. June 2, February 19.
