Abstract

The South As It Is

This article focuses on developments in South Carolina after its freedom. The various new influences and agencies recently brought to bear upon the freed people of South Carolina are all under the direction and control of officers whose headquarters are in this city. The task of instructing the Negroes was begun at Port Royal, under the auspices of the Northern Freedmen's Aid Commissions, so long ago as the spring of 1862, and the schools then founded have since been constantly giving instruction to many hundred persons, and are still in successful operation. The South Carolina Freedmen's Savings Bank was founded at Beaufort in August 1864. The colored soldiers then in the Department of the South were receiving large bounties and good pay, and many of them being unused to the possession of money were in the habit of spending it wastefully and improvidently.