May 11 Rare Autograph & Book Auction
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 5/11/2023
[CIVIL WAR AND EMANCIPATION.] The New South, Port Royal, SC, 13 December 1862. Printing (on p.2) Lincoln's 1 December Annual message on compensated emancipation. 4 pages, folio. Repairs at folds. A RARE EDITION OF THE PRO-UNION PAPER published by Joseph H. Sears, in the free black community of Port Royal, South Carolina, the site of a famous effort to transform former slaves into independent wage workers and land-holders. On 7 November 1861 the Union Army occupied South Carolina's Sea Islands, freeing approximately 10,000 slaves. Seizing the abandoned plantations, Union General Thomas W. Sherman in January 1862, brought teachers and missionaries from the North to help educate and train the now free men and women. Three months later U.S. Secretary of Treasury Salmon Chase appointed Boston attorney Edward L. Pierce to begin the Port Royal Experiment, which would create schools and hospitals for ex-slaves and allow them to buy and run plantations. It constituted the most dramatic example of granting American blacks the same rights and opportunities enjoyed by white Americans during the Civil War, and this even before the Emancipation Proclamation.
With One of a Kind Collectibles LOA.
Rare![CIVIL WAR AND EMANCIPATION.] The New South, Port Royal, SC, 13 December 1862.
Click above for larger image.