Boston, February 19,
1862.
Dear –––: I think you will not be greatly astonished when I
tell you that I am off for Port Royal next week. I go under the auspices of the
Educational Commission to make myself generally useful in whatever way I can,
in reducing some amount of order and industry from the mass of eight or ten
thousand contrabands now within our lines there. Boston is wide awake on the
subject, and I am determined to see if something can't be done to prove that
the blacks will work for other motives than the lash.
The Treasury Department offer subsistence, protection,
transportation, and the War Department offer their hearty cooperation to the
work undertaken here by private citizens, but can't take any more active part
at present for reasons obvious. They ridicule the idea , that these blacks can
ever again be claimed by their runaway masters, which is a satisfactory
foundation for our exertions in overseeing their labor and general deportment.
You don't know what a satisfaction it is to feel at last
that there is a chance for me to do something in this great work that is
going on.
SOURCE: Elizabeth Ware Pearson, Editor, Letters from Port Royal Written at the Time of the Civil War, p. 1-2
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