In February 1862, General Ambrose E. Burnside led Union forces to
victory at the Battle of Roanoke Island. As word spread that the
Union army had established a foothold in eastern North Carolina,
slaves from the surrounding area streamed across Federal lines
seeking freedom. By early 1863, nearly 1,000 refugees had gathered
on Roanoke Island, working together to create a thriving community
that included a school and several churches. As the settlement
expanded, the Reverend Horace James, an army chaplain from
Massachusetts, was appointed to oversee the establishment of a
freedmen's colony there. James and his missionary assistants sought
to instill evangelical fervor and northern republican values in the
colonists, who numbered nearly 3,500 by 1865, through a plan that
included education, small-scale land ownership, and a system of
wage labor.
Time Full of Trial tells the story of the Roanoke Island
freedmen's colony from its contraband-camp beginnings to the
conflict over land ownership that led to its demise in 1867.
Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, Patricia Click traces the
struggles and successes of this long-overlooked yet significant
attempt at building what the Reverend James hoped would be the
model for "a new social order" in the postwar South.