Beaufort, S. C, Dec. 28, 1863.
Alpheus Hardy, Treasurer:
Dear Sir,—Enclosed
please find my draft for one hundred dollars, for the relief of the families of
Freedmen, in response to your circular. Please state to your committee and to
any other gentlemen interested in the question of free labor, that I have disbursed
the sum of $20,000 during the past nine months among the Freedmen here, in the shape
of wages, well earned, besides which they have now on hand ample provision to
feed their families for twelve months to come, the fruit of their own toil.
I employ about 500
laborers — women and children, mostly, having a population of 920 on my lands. They
have raised for me 73,000 pounds of clean Sea Island cotton this year, worth
50d. sterling in Liverpool, besides their own provision crops, above referred to.
This has been done in hearing of Gen. Gilmore's big guns on Morris Island,
surrounded by camps, with no civil law, and without the help of the
able-bodied men, who were all pressed into the military service, leaving the
plantations with none but old men, women and children. I have no paupers, all
the old and infirm being fed and clothed by their friends and children.
I mention these
things to show how easy it is to render the negroes a self-supporting and
wealth-producing class with proper management; and I, at the same time, fully
appreciate the duty imposed upon us as a nation, to extend the area of charity
where the unsettled state of the country renders industry impossible until time
is given to re-organize and force to protect it. We are more fortunately
situated than the people of the Mississippi Valley, and have got the start of
them.
Respectfully yours,
E. S. Philbrick.
SOURCE: New-England Educational Commission for
Freedmen, Extracts from Letters of Teachers and Superintendents of the
New-England Educational Commission for Freedmen, Fourth Series, January 1, 1864,
p. 14
