The Port Royal Experiment by Kevin Dougherty

Author:Kevin Dougherty [Dougherty, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781496809667
Google: z83yjwEACAAJ
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2016-10-19T02:49:26+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Economic Development and Land Redistribution

The Port Royal Experiment pursued economic development in terms of the three fronts Edward Pierce, in his initial report to Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase, identified as “what could be done to reorganize the laborers, prepare them to become sober and self-supporting citizens, and secure the successful culture of a cotton-crop.”1 Integral to Pierce’s objective to “reorganize the laborers” was the issue of land distribution. Efforts to produce “sober and self-supporting citizens” would proceed in accordance with the free-labor ideology. Finally, the prized Sea Island cotton, either as a source of revenue for a cash-strapped Lincoln administration, as a means of funding the development effort, or as a source of personal profit, lay at the center of all economic decisions. Thus, economic development on the Sea Islands involved the timeless considerations of control of the area’s principal natural resource, the individual and his pursuit of happiness, and a state directed land policy.

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