FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO THEODORE TILTON

Rochester, N.Y. 21 Oct[ober] 1862[.]

MY DEAR SIR,

You could not have easily asked me a more difficult question. Were your colored young friend a waiter, a cook white washer or coachman, the case would be different. Places for educated colored young men are hard to find. Why would it not be well to send some of this class as well as white young men to Fort Monroe, Hilton Head¹Hilton Head is a forty-two-square-mile foot-shaped island located near the South Carolina–Georgia border on the Port Royal Sound. The island is part of Beaufort County, South Carolina, and lies approximately twenty miles north of Savannah, Georgia, and ninety-five miles south of Charleston. The island was named after Captain William Hilton, who explored the region in 1663. In 1860 the population of Hilton Head included almost one thousand slaves, who worked on the island’s twenty-four plantations, and their white overseers. In July 1861, Confederates built Fort Walker on Hilton Head Island in order to protect Port Royal Sound from Union attack. In November 1861, over 13,000 Union soldiers invaded the island during the Battle of Port Royal and captured Fort Walker, which was renamed Fort Welles in honor of Lincoln’s secretary of the navy, Gideon Welles. After Hilton Head was made the headquarters of the Department of the South in 1862, its population soared to over 40,000. This number included Union troops, prisoners of war, and escaped slaves, who were known as contrabands. Upon the order of General Thomas W. Sherman, the island’s contraband population was moved into one of the first freedmen’s villages. It was named Mitchelville in honor of General Ormsby M. Mitchel, commander of the Department of the South, who died of yellow fever on Hilton Head in October 1862. Between 1863 and 1865, three additional forts (Mitchel, Sherman, and Howell) were built on the island, and the number of Union troops rose to almost 30,000, which increased the island’s total population to around 50,000. Union troops remained stationed on Hilton Head until 1868. After their departure, the island’s population quickly fell to only a few thousand permanent residents. Whitelaw Reid, 2 vols. (Cincinnati, Ohio, 1868), 1:614–16; Natalie Hefter, ed., (Chicago, 1998), 9–12, 18, 24; Barbara Brooks Tomblin, (Lexington, Ky., 2009), 44–47, 134–36, 288; Thomas, , 1:1007. and elsewhere to teach contrabands.²In May 1862, Union general Benjamin Butler used the term “contraband” to describe the runaway slaves to whom he provided refuge within Union lines at Fortress Monroe. Union commanders on the South Carolina Sea Islands, including Hilton Head, which was recaptured in late 1861, adopted the same policy. Abolitionists quickly organized freedmen’s aid societies and dispatched teachers to both camps, and the Treasury Department supervised the labor of fugitive slaves in both locations. McPherson, , 156–69; McPherson, , 355–56, 497–98. That might be a stepping stone to other positions of usefulness. We are setting up your “out look” from the Independent for our November number.³Douglass is referring to the editorial entitled “The Outlook,” published in the New York
shortly after the issuance of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. The praised the “unity” that had come to the nation after the announcement of the proclamation, and hoped that the unity was evidence that the Northern public accepted the proclamation’s consequences and that America could at last become a true symbol of a Christian nation. Douglass reprinted the piece in his . New York , 25 September 1862; , 5:8 (November 1862). I am delighted with the warmth and freshness I find in all you write. The Independent is a power—and thank Heaven not on the side of oppression—as powers generally are. Who wrote the Article Headed “” which I have copied into my October number.⁴DM, 5:728–29 (October 1862).