his Port Royal experiment of making free workingmen out of slaves. Before his experiment was barely started, however, the problem of the fugitives had assumed such proportions that it was taken from the hands of the over-burdened Treasury Department and given to the army officials." (See Pierce's Report to Secretary Chase)

The Military Rules for FreedmenIn the beginning of the Port Royal experiment confusion reigns. (Actually this will become a familiar pattern.) However they were all in uncharted territory. Notice in this document how you may confuse the treatment of the freedmen with that of free persons of color before the Civil War. However this is a military district where passes were a common feature. The wage and labor controls were not.

Port Royal Relief Committee (History of the PortRoyal Relief Committee)Apr. 15 - The Port Royal Relief Committee of Philadelphia sent funds in the care of Miss Laura Matilda Towne. The Penn School was founded on St. Helena Island, the oldest missionary school of the Port Royal Experiment. The Penn Center is the site of one of the country's first schools for freed slaves. Begun in 1862 as Penn School, an experimental program to educate Sea Island slaves freed at the beginning of the Civil War, it is the oldest and most persistent survivor of the Port Royal Experiment. The first teachers were Northern missionaries Laura Towne and Ellen Murray. Both spent the next forty years of their lives living among and educating former Sea Island slaves, the Gullah people of the South Carolina Low Country.