ABSTRACT
In 1862, when the Civil War was still in an early phase, William Tecumseh Sherman had written to a Southern acquaintance, Thomas Hunton, with whom Sherman had attended West Point. Miffed at Hunton's choice to fight for the Confederacy, Sherman conceded, "We are Enemies, still private friends". If Sherman could be "still private friends"with a traitor and a rebel, was it any wonder that a nation ruled mainly by white supremacists would return the South to the hands of its old masters when the experiment in Reconstruction seemed too tiring, too dangerous, and too little possible. The Civil War had ended slavery however, left the slaverholder's mind intact. Before the war, only four states had given black people the right to vote. Mary Ames and her friend Emily Bliss arrived on Edisto Island, South Carolina, in May 1865 to open a school for some of the 10,000 African-Americans living there, former slaves who were hungry for education.
