Two Historians Want Reconstruction Natl. Monument in Beaufort, S.C.

Pat Young

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
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Historians Greg Downs and Kate Masur argued in the Washington Post that President Obama should create a Reconstruction National Monument in Beaufort, South Carolina. Here is the crux of their argument:

In Beaufort County, all aspects of Reconstruction’s story are well represented. The U.S. Army occupied the area in November 1861. Immediately, slaves from the Sea Islands and surrounding lowlands escaped to the town, where many of the men enlisted to fight for the Union. In June 1863, U.S. soldiers accompanied by Harriet Tubman on the Combahee Ferry raidfreed hundreds of slaves in nearby plantations.

Beaufort was also the home of Robert Smalls, an enslaved pilot who steered the CSS Planter to the U.S. Navy in 1862, used his reward money to purchase his former master’s house and became a local political leader. In 1868, Smalls was a delegate in the state constitutional convention that enfranchised black men and created free public education. Smalls went on to servefive terms in Congress. And he lived long enough to see the eclipse of many of his dreams, fighting fruitlessly against disenfranchisement and Jim Crow segregation as a delegate to the 1895 South Carolina constitutional convention.
 
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