In the light of these views, the attempt shall be made to report truthfully upon the freedmen at Port Royal.  A word, however, as to the name.  Civilization, in its career, may often be traced in the nomenclatures of successive periods.  These people were first called contrabands at Fortress Monroe; but at Port Royal, where they were next introduced to us in any considerable number, they were generally referred to as freedmen.  These terms are milestones in our progress; and they are yet to be lost in the better and more comprehensive designation of citizens, or, when discrimination is convenient, citizens of African descent.

The enterprise for the protection and development of the freedmen at Port Royal has won its way to the regard of mankind.  The best minds of Europe, as well as the best friends of the United States, like Cairnes and Gasparin, have testified much interest in its progress.  An English periodical of considerable merit noticed at some length “Mr. Pierce’s Ten Thousand Clients.”  In Parliament, Earl Russell noted it in its incipient stage, as a reason why England should not intervene in American affairs.  The “Revue des Deux Mondes,” in a recent number, characterizes the colony as “that small pacific army, far more important in the history of civilization than all the military expeditions despatched from time to time since the commencement of the civil war.”

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No little historical interest covers the region to which this account belongs.  Explorations of the coast now known as that of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida, involving the rival pretensions of Spain and France, were made in the first half of the sixteenth century.  They were conducted by Ponce de Leon, Vasquez, Verrazani, and Soto, in search of the fountain of perpetual youth, or to extend empire by right of discovery.  But no permanent settlement by way of colony or garrison was attempted until 1562.

In that year,—­the same in which he drew his sword for his faith, and ten years before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, in which he fell the most illustrious victim,—­Admiral Coligny, the great Protestant chief, anxious to found beyond the seas a refuge for persecuted Huguenots, fitted out the expedition of Jean Ribault, which, after a voyage of over three months across the ocean and northward along the coast, cast anchor on May 27th in the harbor of Port Royal, and gave it the name which it retains to this day.  That year was also to be ever memorable for another and far different enterprise, which was destined to be written in dark and perpetual lines on human history.  Then it was that John Hawkins sailed for Africa in quest of the first cargo of negroes ever brought to the New World.  The expedition of Ribault was the first visit of Europeans to Port Royal or to any part of South Carolina, and the garrison left by him was the first settlement under their auspices ever made on this continent north of Mexico.