The Port Royal Experiment: A Case Study in Development by Kevin Dougherty (review)

In November 1861 the federal occupiers of the Sea Islands off the South Carolina coast unleashed an ambitious experiment to transition several thousand slaves to freedom. Port Royal, the area’s largest harbor, was an attractive military target, offering an ideal site for the Union’s blockade of Charleston, Savannah, and Wilmington. But the Sea Islands were also a unique source of long-staple cotton, a commodity valued for its strength and utility in woven fabrics. The intervention of northern interests in the lives of the black workforce of the islands seemed to offer valuable lessons for the future of the South after a Union victory.

Kevin Dougherty’s The Port Royal Experiment: A Case Study in Development departs from Willie Lee Rose’s influential treatment of Port Royal by suggesting that the events following Union occupation should not be seen as a “rehearsal for reconstruction,” but instead as a case study of institutional development that has parallels in modern nation-building efforts. Dougherty notes that there was a crucial difference between the war-era Sea Islands and the postbellum South because the old planter class had fled the islands entirely, allowing Union authorities, missionary societies, and northern investors to pursue their objectives without the opposition of a recalcitrant white population. How would the development of civil society, philanthropic aid for black residents and refugees, land redistribution, and political inclusion proceed under these circumstances?

The answer, Dougherty finds, is that institutional development was far more halting and contested than was anticipated. From the start, there was a lack of unity in post-combat operations, owing to the overlapping federal authority of the War and Treasury Departments. The situation was further complicated by the arrival of Gideonites and other missionaries from Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, each with a competing agenda. These differences soon manifested themselves in the varied meanings that the diverse groups who came to the Sea Islands attached to “development.” The Gideonites embraced a free labor ideology that would orient former slaves toward education, family life, and wage work on former plantations. Union officers sought to maintain social order and mobilize resources for the war effort. The freedmen and freedwomen themselves wanted their own plots of land and communities that could thrive apart from the needs of northern markets.

Many of these hopes were destined to end in disappointment. During the war, the plantations of the Sea Islands were confiscated by the federal government and often sold to white northern speculators. By 1870 most of the Gideonites were gone, leaving efforts to develop an educational infrastructure and civil society incomplete. Spoilers challenged the Port Royal experiment at every step. Dougherty draws analogies between these setbacks and modern peacemaking efforts. While his parallels may occasionally strike historians as anachronistic, they highlight the value of using the past to understand postwar organizing today. The Port Royal experiment reveals the difficulty of institutional development when interventions occur under conditions of profound uncertainty.