Mitchelville was a town built during the American Civil War for formerly enslaved people, located on what is now Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. It was named for one of the local Union Army generals, Ormsby M. Mitchel. The town was a population center for the enterprise known as the Port Royal Experiment.
History
During the first year of the Civil War, on November 7, 1861, Union forces consisting of approximately 60 ships and 20,000 men under the command of Union Navy Captain Samuel F. DuPont and Army General Thomas W. Sherman attacked Confederate forces commanded by Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Drayton (a local planter) defending Hilton Head Island at Fort Walker and Fort Beauregard. By 3:00 p.m., the Confederate forces had retreated from the forts; when Union troops landed on Hilton Head Island, they encountered no resistance and discovered that the white inhabitants of the island had already fled to the mainland.
Hilton Head Island became the Union's southern headquarters for the war and a military supply depot. Fortifications (such as Fort Howell), a hospital, barracks, and other utilitarian structures were built for the military, which at times numbered 30,000 men. The island was used as a staging ground for the blockading of Savannah and Charleston.
Within two days of the Union capture of the island, approximately 150 former slaves (or those left behind by the Hilton Head Island planters when they fled the island) came to the Union army's encampment; by December 15, approximately 320 former slaves had sought refuge at the Union army's encampment. One Union soldier stationed on Hilton Head at the time recounted:
In February 1862, there were at least 600 contrabands living in Union encampments on Hilton Head Island.
These former slaves were regarded as "contraband of war" or as simply "contrabands;" they were not yet technically "freedmen", and the Union army was unsure of what to do with them. General Thomas West Sherman repeatedly wrote his superiors in Washington asking for guidance regarding, and supplies for, the "contrabands". Official policy regarding "contrabands" varied between Union-occupied areas, a problem which persisted throughout the war.
On February 6, 1862, General Sherman issued General Order 9, which requested assistance for the contrabands from the "highly favored and philanthropic people" in the north. Help came from two sources: from the philanthropic northerners whom Sherman requested assistance from (such as that given by the American Missionary Association); and from Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, who sent his colleague and outspoken opponent of slavery Edward L. Pierce to Port Royal to examine and eventually oversee the government effort regarding the freed slaves. Pierce and representatives from the American Missionary Association quickly devised a plan for the education, welfare, and employment of the former slaves. In April 1862, a military order was issued freeing the blacks on the Sea Islands. On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in the rebellious/Confederate states, which included South Carolina:
Many Union officers complained that the former slaves "were becoming a burden and a nuisance." Some Union troops stole from the citizens of Mitchelville, and it is apparent from primary resources that the racial attitudes of some of the Union troops towards the blacks were negative; General Mitchel remarked that he found "a feeling prevailing among the officers and soldiers of prejudice against the blacks." By February 1862, the former slaves were living inside the Union camps, in whitewashed, wooden barrack-like structures built specifically for them and under the control of the Quartermaster's Department; similar camps were also built in nearby Beaufort, Bay Point, and Otter Island. But by October 1862, however, Union leaders believed this approach was a failure, as living conditions for the freedmen were substandard and there was a need to separate the soldiers from the former slaves, and vice versa: