In which Moominmama learns about Reconstruction, the amazing life of Robert Smalls and meets a tiny terrapin....

South Carolina is just the other side of the Savannah River, and Beaufort, S.C. is a short drive from there, a part of the Sea Islands, which has a remarkable history on several fronts. Famous women like Harriet Tubman and Clara Barton walked Beaufort's streets and cared for the injured during the Civil War. Chief among the town's claims to fame was its capture by Union soldiers early in the war (late 1861), making it the testing grounds of Reconstruction well before war ended.  

As plantation owners and other whites fled this productive agricultural region -- not nearly as well fortified as Charleston or Savannah -- the Union assisted the roughly 10,000 formerly enslaved people to get a toe-hold in the new economy, quickly showing the world, as Robert Smalls would later say:

"My race needs no special defense. For the past history of them in this country proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battlefield of life." 

Reconstruction was about providing that equal chance, an effort that had remarkable success in Beaufort and the Sea Islands before it was undone and replaced by Jim Crow.

Smalls' life took him from slavery to five terms in Congress with a thrilling escape in between. As a youngster sent by his owner to work at the port of Charleston, he became familiar with boat operations such that he and a small crew of enslaved men successfully steered a Confederate steamer, the Planter, out of Charleston harbor in the dark of night, having snuck their wives and children aboard before delivering the vessel into the hands of Union soldiers.

As National Park Service guide Richard Condon tells the story, the men were forced to work for the Confederacy and none too happy about it. But they were intimately familiar with the working of the steam ship, and Smalls, age 23, was known for doing a killer imitation of the Captain and his limp.

The day of their escape, they had been loading weaponry aboard and were set to depart the next day when the white crew members decided to enjoy a night on the town. 

The remaining Black crew directed their families to wait at a nearby wharf. Then, in the wee hours, with the white crew still absent, they fired up the boilers and set off. Smalls dressed in some of the Captain's garb, using his skills in mimicry to make it appear in the dim light as if he was the white Captain. They got their families onboard and hidden. The escape would never had succeeded if he and the crew hadn't learned the horn signals required to safely pass Fort Sumpter and Fort Moultrie.

But it was still risky. All involved had agreed to let the boat be blown up rather than to accept recapture if their escape attempt failed. But they made it past the Confederate strongholds and headed for Beaufort, where -- assuming the Union didn't attack -- they could turn the boat and weapons over to the Union side.

The plan succeeded. And Smalls continued to pilot the former Confederate vessel on multiple missions for the Union, one of many Black men to risk his life for the freedom of those still enslaved. The money he was paid allowed him to purchase the home above, on the property where he'd been born and lived with his mother.

This purchase was enabled, and made legally binding, by the Reconstruction efforts to provide land and education to the newly freed. Once the plantation owners fled, the federal government paid the newly freed men and women to continue to grow the cotton, indigo and other valuable crops that helped fund the war effort.

Then the federal government notified the plantation and other property owners that their land would be forfeited to the government if they failed to pay their taxes. Some did pay up and reclaim their land, but many, many others forfeited the properties. At that point, the land was offered up in a series of tax auctions, allowing the newly freed to buy farmland and homes through the tax auction with the money they'd earned. The paperwork documenting those sales was later challenged by former white owners but found valid by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Unlike many other areas where land was given over to the formerly enslaved, these new property owners were able to keep their land and homes thanks to sales receipts, while many others were cheated out of land they thought they owned and forced instead to sharecrop.

So not only did Robert Smalls now own this beautiful home free and clear, other men owned property as well. They built churches, opened stores, operated a bank, and lobbied for schools. 

In fact, the second part of Moominmama's Reconstruction Era National Historical Park visit was on St. Helena Island just 15 minutes away, where the Penn Center now stands on the grounds of one of the first schools set up for African Americans in the south. In this case, the land for the school was donated by a Black man, Hastings Gantt (any connection to the Rochester N.Y. Gantts?) who donated land he'd acquired through tax auction to allow for the school, named in honor of Quaker William Penn. 

In 1862, northerners Ellen Murray and Laura Towne came to St. Helena and founded the school -- Ellen was Quaker, and Laura, a Unitarian (familiar partnership!). In short order they were joined by a Black teacher and abolitionist from Philadelphia, Charlotte Forten. The Penn School soon added a community hall, dormitories and agricultural buildings -- all devoted to the education of newly freed men and women of all ages. The Penn School also became a "normal school," or teacher training school and continued operating as a school into the 1940s.

The property is now in the hands of a nonprofit, the Penn Center, which has an agreement with the National Park Service. 

I was able to see the community building known as Darrah Hall and walked around outside the other buildings, but the Penn Center itself was not open to tourists -- they had a group of teachers visiting that day, so obviously continuing the mission!

This campus was also used by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference during the Civil Rights era, and there are pictures posted of Martin Luther King Jr. at work as he prepared his speeches and campaigns.

Once again, I find there is so much to learn and much history I was never taught in school. President Obama deserves credit for making Beaufort, Penn Center and a former military training ground nearby part of the National Park Service to preserve and share these stories. 

One other tour Moominmama took this week is worth sharing briefly. I spent a couple hours on the beaches of Tybee Island learning about the strange critters that live on the shore and under the sand. 

All interesting but none quite as photogenic as this diamondback terrapin. A homeowner on the ocean side of the island had come upon it and knew it was in the wrong place. 

He handed it over to someone from the Tybee Island Marine Science Center who let us get a closer look. It will be cared for at the science center until it's a little bigger and then released into the salt marsh side of the island where it belongs. 

I saw and learned about ghost shrimp and sea cucumbers too, but they are considerably less attractive!

Moominmama leaves you instead with a picture of sunrise over Tybee Island's North Beach! It has been a wonderful visit and I head next week to Florida's Gulf Coast.