Images of Reconstruction Era National Historical Park – Southeastern South Carolina, taken in August 2022.

Reconstruction Era National Historical Park comprises four locations, the Old Beaufort Firehouse, the Brick Baptist Church and Darrah Hall located on the grounds of the Penn Center National Historic Landmark District, and Camp Saxton at Port Royal. All were instrumental in establishing a refuge and educational opportunities for freed slaves in the deep south during and after the Civil War.

Only seven months after the beginning of the Civil War, South Carolina’s Port Royal Sound was captured by the Union Army and held for the duration of the war. In 1862 the US began and executed a plan to establish a school to educate Freedmen. Classes in reading, writing, spelling, geography and arithmetic were initially taught at the Brick Baptist Church and later expanded with the creation of the Penn Center.

It was on January 1, 1863 at Camp Saxton, a recruiting and training depot for some of the first African American troops to serve in the US Army, where a reading of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation took place coinciding with the presentation of the colors to the men of the 1st South Carolina Infantry unit.