Book excerpt: Excerpt from Letters From Port Royal, Written at the Time of the Civil War With Commodore Dupont's capture, on November 7, 1861, Of two earth forts which the rebels had recently thrown up at Hilton Head and Bay Point, South Caro lina, the Sea Island region became Union territory. The planters and their families having fled precipi tately, the United States Government found itself in possession of almost everything that had been theirs, the two chief items being the largest cotton crop ever yet raised there, nearly ready for exporting, and several hundred demoralized, destitute slaves, the number of whom was daily being increased by refugees and returned fugitives. The negroes were plainly a burden some problem, the cotton a valuable piece of property. The first thing to do was obvious, and fortunately the same cotton-agents who were despatched by the authorities at Washington to collect and ship the pro perty were able, by employing negroes for the purpose, to make a beginning towards solving the problem. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.