Tom and I stopped at Reconstruction Era National Historical Park on our way back to Georgia for our second go-round at Fort Frederica National Monument this year.  Reconstruction Era is located in Beaufort, South Carolina.  I got all the stamps for South Carolina parks when we worked at Kings Mountain National Battlefield in 2016.  But they keep adding new National Park sites!  What seems complete at first sometimes needs revisiting.

Reconstruction Era National Historical Park was designated in 2017, the year after we worked at Kings Mountain.  Our friend, Ranger Chris Barr, was one of the first full-time rangers hired at this new National Park site.  We worked with him at Chickamauga and Chattanooga.  He loves the Reconstruction Era and is excited to interpret it for the public.  He recently oversaw the remodeling of the Visitors Center which is housed in an old firehouse in historic downtown Beaufort.

What, exactly, was Reconstruction?  The Reconstruction era began when the first Union troops seized land in Virginia and South Carolina in 1861, allowing enslaved people to be employed by the army.  Reconstruction was dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of the abolition of slavery and the reintegration of the eleven former Confederate States into the United States. During this period, three amendments were added to the Constitution granting citizenship and equal civil rights to the newly freed slaves.

In 1867 and 1868, Republicans in Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts, setting out the terms by which the former Confederate states could be readmitted to the Union. Constitutional conventions held throughout the South gave Black men the right to vote. New state governments were established by a coalition of freedmen, supportive white Southerners, and Northern transplants. They were opposed by “Redeemers,” who sought to restore white supremacy. Violent groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, engaged in paramilitary insurgency and terrorism to disrupt the efforts of the Reconstruction governments.

Continuing resistance to Reconstruction by Southern whites and its high cost contributed to its losing support in the North during the Grant administration. The 1876 presidential election was marked by widespread Black voter suppression in the South, and the result was close and contested.  The Compromise of 1877 awarded the election to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes.  Federal troops withdrew from the South, effectively bringing Reconstruction to an end.

The Reconstruction Era National Historical Park tells the story of this period of time.  The monument includes four locations in and near Beaufort, South Carolina. The Beaufort area came under the control of the Union Army in November 1861. As a result, it was one of the first places in the United States where emancipated slaves voted, bought property and created churches, schools and businesses.  The four sites that are part of the park are:

• Darrah Hall, an early school in the South for freed slaves.  Even before the national monument was declared, Penn Center was part of a National Historic Landmark District. It is significant not only for its association with Reconstruction and civil rights, but also as a center of Gullah cultural heritage.
• Brick Baptist Church.  Located next to Penn Center, this church building was constructed in 1855 by enslaved persons who were relegated to its balcony out of the sight of white worshipers. In 1861, after the Battle of Port Royal, some 8,000 freed slaves took control of the church. It is the oldest church on Saint Helena Island.
• The Old Beaufort Firehouse, in downtown Beaufort, near other historically significant sites. The old firehouse, which is also part of the 304-acre Beaufort National Historic District, now houses the visitor center for the national historic park.

• 

  Camp Saxton Site/Emancipation Grove at Port Royal — this is the location where Union Army General Rufus Saxton publicly read the Emancipation Proclamation to a gathering of 3,000 slaves from the surrounding Sea Islands on New Year’s Day 1863. Additionally, it was the site where some of the first African-Americans were mustered into the U.S. Army, as enlisted soldiers in the 1st South Carolina Volunteers.  A small white church, called Pinckney Porter’s Chapel, houses the exhibits for Camp Saxton.

Tom and I spent quite a bit of time in the Visitors Center talking to a young ranger who was passionate about Reconstruction.  He said he had grown up on Hilton Head Island and never heard about Reconstruction until he was a history major in college.  He thought that was wrong, and was doing his best to educate people in the area.  The ranger told us that there were more properties owned by black people in Beaufort than in any other area of the south in the period after the Civil War.

After talking to the ranger, I got my stamp, and then Tom and I headed out to explore.  We saw a lot of the historic buildings in the Beaufort National Historic District.  Once we were finished in Beaufort (more on Beaufort next week), we drove the short distance to Camp Saxton and the Emancipation Grove in Port Royal.  This is also the site of the British tabby Fort Frederick.

We saw the remains of Fort Frederick and stood under the live oaks in the Emancipation Grove.  I was struck by the promise that the newly freed black people must have felt as they built new lives in this place.  And then the ways that the black people must have felt abandoned by the government after Federal troops were withdrawn and their gains erased.

Reconstruction Era was a short but important time for our country.  It gave the newly freed people a reason to hope for equality, and they have kept that hope alive.  Maybe someday we will have true equality for all people in our country.  A hope for all of us.