Mitchelville

Mitchelville was a town built during the American Civil War for escaped slaves, located on what is now Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. It was named for one of the local Union Army generals, Ormsby M. Mitchel. The town was a population center for the enterprise known as the Port Royal Experiment.

During the first year of the Civil War, on November 7, 1861, Union forces consisting of approximately 60 ships and 20,000 men under the command of Union Navy Captain Samuel F. DuPont and Army General Thomas W. Sherman attacked Confederate forces commanded by Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Drayton (a local planter) defending Hilton Head Island at Fort Walker and Fort Beauregard. By 3:00 p.m., the Confederate forces had retreated from the forts; when Union troops landed on Hilton Head Island, they encountered no resistance and discovered that the white inhabitants of the island had already fled to the mainland.

Hilton Head Island became the Union’s southern headquarters for the war and a military supply depot. Fortifications (such as Fort Howell), a hospital, barracks, and other utilitarian structures were built for the military, which at times numbered 30,000 men. The island was used as a staging ground for the blockading of Savannah and Charleston.

Within two days of the Union capture of the island, approximately 150 escaped slaves (or those left behind by the Hilton Head Island planters when they fled the island) came to the Union army’s encampment; by December 15, approximately 320 escaped slaves had sought refuge at the Union army’s encampment. One Union soldier stationed on Hilton Head at the time recounted:

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