Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

The effect of the battle of Port Royal was as largely felt in the North, where it revived the hopes of her people, as in the South, to whose people it revealed the presence of a new and pressing danger. The Federals had conquered a strong base of operations on the enemy's coast; they had carried the war into South Carolina, the State which had given the first signal of civil war, and had been the more ardent in the struggle because she had thought herself less liable to suffer from it. Sherman might, perhaps, at the first moment of his adversary's disorder, have been able to push his success farther, and to lead his army upon Charleston or Savannah. But he was afraid of risking such a venture, and contented himself with the occupancy of his new conquest, in order to make it the centre of operations rather political than military.

The archipelago of St. Helena opened the heart of the slave States to the abolition campaign, and offered a place of refuge to the negroes who were flying from the control of their rebel masters. The latter had all left Beaufort and its vicinity; and when the Federals occupied that small town on the 11th of November, they found only the black population, who had refused to abandon it. Notwithstanding their ignorance and stupidity, often feigned, which was the consequence of their servile condition, the negroes perfectly understood that the opponents of their masters could not be their enemies; they had frequently heard abolitionists spoken of with hatred, which set them to thinking; and when, in the course of the war, Federal vessels approached the plantations deserted by their owners, the abandoned slaves were more than once seen crowding on board in search of that legendary personage who was to deliver them from all their ills, and whom, in a jargon curiously expressive, they styled Massa Bobolition.

But General Sherman, who was not an abolitionist, and upon whom President Lincoln had moreover enjoined the greatest caution in regard to the slave question, could only protect them, without undertaking a direct propagandism against the servile institution. As we propose to return to this subject in a later volume, we shall merely remark in this place that he acquitted himself of this delicate mission very wisely, and that he performed the duties imposed by humanity towards the people whom he had