Title Work: Civil War : promise of reconstruction, The

"Recreates the events that characterize the promises and the failures of the recnstruction period.  Shows how the Port Royal "experiment" to educate and provide jobs for the ex-slaves, and to help them become productive citizens failed and they became hopeless share croppers."--Audiovisual Materials Catalog 2002-2007 by Audiovisual Services of St. Louis Public Schools.

"Examines the Union Government's Port Royal Experiment to discover how this plan for educating and aiding the slave to become a freedman anticipated many developments of the Reconstruction period that were to occur throughout the South."--WorldCat.

"The Port Royal Experiment was a program begun during the American Civil War in which former slaves successfully worked on the land abandoned by plantation owners. In 1861 the Union liberated the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina and their main harbor, Port Royal. The white residents fled, leaving behind 10,000 black slaves. Several private Northern charity organizations stepped in to help the former slaves become self-sufficient. The result was a model of what Reconstruction could have been. The African Americans demonstrated their ability to work the land efficiently and live independently of white control. They assigned themselves daily tasks for cotton growing and spent their extra time cultivating their own crops, fishing and hunting. By selling their surplus crops, the locals acquired small amounts of property. In 1865 President Andrew Johnson ended the experiment, returning the land to its previous white owners."--Wikipedia.