
Tra le molte interessanti collezioni digitalizzate dalla Università della Carolina del Sud (University of South Carolina Digital Collection) segnaliamo quella che rende accessibili ai lettori le pagine del quotidiano storico The New South Newspaper (1862-1866).
Si tratta di una fonte di grande interesse per chi è interessato alla Guerra civile americana (1861-1865).
“The New South offers a glimpse into an era of unprecedented social upheaval in the South Carolina Lowcountry. In the Battle of Port Royal Sound of Nov. 7, 1861, Union Navy forces seized control of Port Royal Harbor, and Beaufort District’s white residents fled in their wake. Union forces occupied the district through the end of the war. Officials confiscated the abandoned properties and resold them to former slaves and Northern cotton speculators. Abolitionists resettled in the area to provide aid to the newly emancipated slaves, who comprised the overwhelming majority of district residents, and to open schools such as the Penn School on St. Helena Island. In 1865, U.S. Army General William T. Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15, which reserved for former slaves the islands from Port Royal to Charleston (President Andrew Johnson later revoked the order). The years immediately following the war saw Beaufort’s economy diversify, the district reorganize as Beaufort County, and African Americans and the Republican Party rise to political prominence, led by Hastings Gantt, Thomas E. Miller, and Robert Smalls”.
URL: <http://www.sc.edu/library/digital/collections/newsouth.html>