One hundred and fifty years ago this evening, on New Year's Eve 1862, thousands of black people across the South Carolina sea islands surrounding Port Royal Sound gathered in their small churches for another Watch Night Service.
They had done this annually since their conversion to Christianity in order to watch for the new year in a ceremony of worship and fellowship. Although they understood that conversion gave them salvation from hell after this life, they endured a hell in this life. They had received spiritual freedom, but they remained slaves.
This New Year's Eve, however, was radically different, because at the stroke of midnight, they would become free men and women. This year, they watched though the night for the Emancipation Proclamation to take effect.
Sadly, it would take another two years before President Abraham Lincoln could implement his proclamation with the enactment of the 13th Amendment, which would finally give freedom to all slaves. But here at Port Royal 150 years ago, these slaves were freed by the proclamation, because it pertained to Union-held territory within the Confederate states, and the Union army was occupying the area.
In the morning, these newly freed citizens would be transported by steamers provided by the army to Camp Saxton, on what had been the Smith Plantation, to hear the proclamation read to them. The First and Second regiments of South Carolina voluntary infantry then stood in formation. Except for the officers who were whites, these were black faces in blue uniforms. Themselves slaves until this day, they would fight to bring freedom to all slaves.
On the flag-draped platform stood Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson of Massachusetts, who commanded the First Regiment. By way of introduction of the government official who would read the proclamation, he observed it was "a thing infinitely appropriate" that it should be read by this particular individual, the Rev. Dr. William Henry Brisbane.
Although Brisbane was headquartered in nearby Beauford as chairman of the U.S. Direct Tax Commission for South Carolina, it was "a thing infinitely appropriate, a South Carolinian addressing South Carolinians; for he was reared among these very islands, and here long since [1837] emancipated his own slaves."
The back story is that Brisbane, both a Baptist pastor and medical doctor, had inherited a plantation with its many slaves. Although initially a published advocate of slavery as well as himself a slaveholder, he became convinced by more careful reading of the Bible that slavery is sinful. Accordingly, he freed his own slaves and, consequently, was driven out of the South. He was appointed to head the tax commission after having served as chaplain in the Union army.
