[Federal Register Volume 82, Number 12 (Thursday, January 19, 2017)]
[Presidential Documents]
[Pages 6167-6177]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2017-01363]


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                         Presidential Documents 
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  Federal Register / Vol. 82 , No. 12 / Thursday, January 19, 2017 / 
Presidential Documents  

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 Title 3--
 The President

[[Page 6167]]

                Proclamation 9567 of January 12, 2017

                
Establishment of the Reconstruction Era National 
                Monument

                By the President of the United States of America

                A Proclamation

                The Reconstruction Era, a period spanning the early 
                Civil War years until the start of Jim Crow racial 
                segregation in the 1890s, was a time of significant 
                transformation in the United States, as the Nation 
                grappled with the challenge of integrating millions of 
                newly freed African Americans into its social, 
                political, and economic life. It was in many ways the 
                Nation's Second Founding, as Americans abolished 
                slavery and struggled earnestly, if not always 
                successfully, to build a nation of free and equal 
                citizens. During Reconstruction, Congress passed the 
                Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth constitutional 
                amendments that abolished slavery, guaranteed due 
                process and equal protection under the law, and gave 
                all males the ability to vote by prohibiting voter 
                discrimination based on race, color, or previous 
                condition of servitude. Ultimately, the unmet promises 
                of Reconstruction led to the modern civil rights 
                movement a century later.

                The Reconstruction Era began when the first United 
                States soldiers arrived in slaveholding territories, 
                and enslaved people on plantations and farms and in 
                cities escaped from their owners and sought refuge with 
                Union forces or in free states. This happened in 
                November 1861 in the Sea Islands or ``Lowcountry'' of 
                southeastern South Carolina, and Beaufort County in 
                particular. Just seven months after the start of the 
                Civil War, Admiral Samuel F. DuPont led a successful 
                attack on Port Royal Sound and brought a swath of this 
                South Carolina coast under Union control. The white 
                residents (less than twenty percent of the population), 
                including the wealthy owners of rice and cotton 
                plantations, quickly abandoned their country 
                plantations and their homes in the town of Beaufort as 
                Union forces came ashore. More than 10,000 African 
                Americans--about one-third of the enslaved population 
                of the Sea Islands at the time--refused to flee the 
                area with their owners.

                Beaufort County became one of the first places in the 
                United States where formerly enslaved people could 
                begin integrating themselves into free society. While 
                the Civil War raged in the background, Beaufort County 
                became the birthplace of Reconstruction, or what 
                historian Willie Lee Rose called a ``rehearsal for 
                Reconstruction.'' With Federal forces in charge of the 
                Sea Islands, the Department of the Treasury, with the 
                support of President Lincoln and the War Department, 
                decided to turn the military occupation into a novel 
                social experiment, known as the Port Royal Experiment, 
                to help former slaves become self-sufficient. They 
                enlisted antislavery and religious societies in the 
                North to raise resources and recruit volunteers for the 
                effort. Missionary organizations headquartered in the 
                Northeast established outposts in Beaufort County.

                In and around Beaufort County during Reconstruction, 
                the first African Americans enlisted as soldiers, the 
                first African American schools were founded, early 
                efforts to distribute land to former slaves took place, 
                and many of the Reconstruction Era's most significant 
                African American politicians, including Robert Smalls, 
                came to prominence. African American political 
                influence and land ownership endured there long after 
                setbacks in other regions. In short, events and people 
                from Beaufort County illustrate

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                the most important challenges of Reconstruction--
                crucial questions related to land, labor, education, 
                and politics after the destruction of slavery--and some 
                early hopeful efforts to address them. The significant 
                historical events that transpired in Beaufort County 
                make it an ideal place to tell stories of 
                experimentation, potential transformation, hope, 
                accomplishment, and disappointment. In Beaufort County, 
                including St. Helena Island, the town of Port Royal, 
                and the city of Beaufort, many existing historic 
                objects demonstrate the transformative effect of 
                emancipation and Reconstruction.

                Freed people hungered for education, as South Carolina 
                had long forbidden teaching slaves to read and write. 
                In 1862, Laura M. Towne and Ellen Murray from 
                Pennsylvania were among the first northern teachers to 
                arrive as part of the Port Royal Experiment. They 
                established a partnership as educators at the Penn 
                School on St. Helena Island that lasted for four 
                decades. Charlotte Forten, a well-educated African 
                American woman from a prominent abolitionist family in 
                Philadelphia, joined the faculty later that year. The 
                first classes for the former slaves were held at The 
                Oaks plantation house, headquarters of the occupying 
                U.S. military forces in the region. In 1863, Murray and 
                Towne moved their school into Brick Church, a Baptist 
                church near the center of the island. In the spring of 
                1864, supporters in Philadelphia purchased school 
                buildings for Towne and Murray, and construction of 
                Penn School began across the field from Brick Church on 
                50 acres of property donated by Hastings Gantt, an 
                African American landowner.

                Penn School helped many African Americans gain self-
                respect and self-reliance and integrate into free 
                society. Towne and Murray strove to provide an 
                education comparable to that offered in the best 
                northern schools. The faculty also provided other 
                support, including medical care, social services, and 
                employment assistance. Penn School would evolve into 
                the Penn Center in the 20th century, and remain a 
                crucial place for education, community, and political 
                organizing for decades to come. As a meeting place in 
                the 1950s and 60s for civil rights leaders, including 
                Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the staff of the 
                Southern Christian Leadership Conference, this historic 
                place links the democratic aspirations of 
                Reconstruction to those of the modern civil rights 
                movement. Darrah Hall is the oldest standing structure 
                on the site of the Penn School grounds. Students and 
                community members built it around 1903, during the 
                transition in the South from the Reconstruction Era to 
                an era of racial segregation and political 
                disenfranchisement.

                The Brick Church where Towne and Murray held classes in 
                1863-64 is today the oldest church on St. Helena 
                Island. Once freed from their owners, African Americans 
                in Beaufort County wanted to worship in churches and 
                join organizations they controlled. The Brick Church--
                also known as the Brick Baptist Church--was built by 
                slaves in 1855 for the white planters on St. Helena 
                Island. When the white population fled from the Sea 
                Islands in 1861, the suddenly freed African Americans 
                made the church their own. The Brick Church has been a 
                place of worship and gathering ever since, and 
                continues to serve the spiritual needs of the community 
                to this day.

                Camp Saxton in Port Royal--formerly the site of a 
                plantation owned by John Joyner Smith--is where the 
                First South Carolina Regiment Volunteers mustered into 
                the U.S. Army and trained from November 1862 to January 
                1863. In August 1862, U.S. Brigadier General Rufus 
                Saxton, the military governor of the abandoned 
                plantations in the Department of the South, received 
                permission to recruit five thousand African Americans, 
                mostly former slaves, into the Union Army. The former 
                slaves assumed that military service would lead to 
                rights of citizenship. Saxton selected Captain Thomas 
                Wentworth Higginson of the 51st Massachusetts, a former 
                Unitarian minister, abolitionist, and human rights 
                activist, to command the regiment. An important ally of 
                Higginson and the African American troops was Harriet 
                Tubman, the famed conductor on the Underground 
                Railroad, who in May of 1862

[[Page 6169]]

                arrived in Beaufort as part of the Port Royal 
                Experiment and who served skillfully as a nurse at Camp 
                Saxton.

                Camp Saxton was also the location of elaborate and 
                historic ceremonies on January 1, 1863, to announce and 
                celebrate the issuance of the Emancipation 
                Proclamation, which freed all slaves in states then 
                ``in rebellion'' against the United States. General 
                Saxton himself had attended church services at the 
                Brick Church in the fall of 1862 to recruit troops and 
                to invite everyone, African American and white, ``to 
                come to the camp . . . on New Year's Day, and join in 
                the grand celebration.'' This Emancipation Proclamation 
                celebration was particularly significant because it 
                occurred in Union-occupied territory in the South where 
                the provisions of the Proclamation would actually take 
                effect before the end of the war.

                Over five thousand people, including freed men, women, 
                and children, Union military officials, guest speakers, 
                and missionary teachers, gathered around the speakers' 
                platform built in a grove of live oaks near the Smith 
                plantation house. One of the majestic witness trees has 
                become known as the Emancipation Oak. Of all the 
                prayers, hymns, and speeches during the three-hour 
                ceremony, one of the most moving was the spontaneous 
                singing of ``My country, tis of thee; Sweet land of 
                liberty'' when the American flag was presented to 
                Higginson. As part of the celebration, the military had 
                prepared a feast of roasted oxen for all to enjoy.

                The town of Beaufort was the center of the County's 
                social, political, cultural, and economic life during 
                the Reconstruction Era. Before the Battle of Port Royal 
                Sound in November 1861, Beaufort was where the planters 
                spent the summer months in their grand homes. Beaufort 
                served as the depot for plantation supplies transported 
                there by steamship. The Old Beaufort Firehouse, built 
                around 1912, stands near the heart of Reconstruction 
                Era Beaufort, across the street from the Beaufort 
                Arsenal, and within walking distance of over fifty 
                historic places. The Beaufort Arsenal, the location 
                today of the Beaufort History Museum, was built in 
                1799, rebuilt in 1852, and renovated by the Works 
                Progress Administration in 1934, and served 
                historically as the home of the Beaufort Volunteer 
                Artillery Company that fought in the Revolutionary and 
                Civil Wars.

                Several historic Beaufort properties within walking 
                distance of the Firehouse are associated with Robert 
                Smalls, the most influential African American 
                politician in South Carolina during the Reconstruction 
                Era. Robert Smalls was born in Beaufort in 1839, the 
                son of slaves of the Henry McKee family. When Smalls 
                was twelve years old, his owner hired him out to work 
                in Charleston, where he learned to sail, rig, and pilot 
                ships. In May 1862, Smalls navigated the CSS Planter, a 
                Confederate ship, through Charleston harbor, past the 
                guns of Fort Sumter, and turned it over to Union 
                forces. This courageous escape made him an instant hero 
                for the Union, and he soon began working as a pilot for 
                the U.S. Navy. Smalls and his family used prize money 
                awarded for the Planter to purchase the house in 
                Beaufort once owned by the family that had owned him.

                In 1864, Smalls was named to a delegation of African 
                American South Carolinians to the Republican National 
                Convention in Baltimore, where the delegation 
                unsuccessfully petitioned the party to make African 
                American enfranchisement part of its platform. Elected 
                to the Beaufort County School Board in 1867, Smalls 
                began his advocacy for education as the key to African 
                American success in the new political and economic 
                order.

                In the years immediately following the end of the Civil 
                War, the United States fiercely debated issues critical 
                to Reconstruction. Southern Democrats tried to regain 
                the power they held before the Civil War. The 
                Republican majorities in the U.S. Congress rebuffed 
                them, and proceeded to pass legislation and 
                constitutional amendments to implement the principles 
                of the Union victory. In 1867, Congress passed the 
                Military Reconstruction Acts that called for military 
                administration of southern states and new state 
                constitutions. Voters elected Robert Smalls as a 
                delegate to the South Carolina Constitutional 
                Convention that met in Charleston in January 1868, 
                where

[[Page 6170]]

                he successfully advocated for public education with 
                compulsory attendance. The resulting constitution also 
                provided for universal male suffrage and racial, 
                political, and legal equality. In this new political 
                order, Robert Smalls was elected to the South Carolina 
                General Assembly from 1868 to 1874, first as a 
                representative and then as a senator. In 1874, Smalls 
                was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where 
                he served five terms.

                The success of Smalls and other African American 
                lawmakers who had been enslaved only a handful of years 
                before infuriated South Carolina's Democrats. Some of 
                them turned to violence, carried out by the Ku Klux 
                Klan and others. On more than one occasion, a homegrown 
                vigilante group known as the Red Shirts terrorized 
                Robert Smalls.

                As a result of the contested Presidential and South 
                Carolina gubernatorial elections of 1876, deals were 
                made that effectively ended political and military 
                Reconstruction in 1877. Smalls, however, continued to 
                serve in Congress until 1886. He then returned to 
                Beaufort, and served for many years as the 
                Presidentially appointed customs collector for the Port 
                of Beaufort.

                In 1895, Smalls was elected a delegate to his second 
                South Carolina Constitutional Convention. Twenty years 
                after Democrats had regained control of the State 
                government, they had figured out how to take back 
                African Americans' rights as citizens. Smalls spoke 
                eloquently at the Convention against this blow to 
                democracy and representative government, but ultimately 
                rights hard won three decades before were struck down. 
                South Carolina voters ratified a new constitution that 
                effectively eliminated African Americans from electoral 
                politics and codified racial segregation in law for 
                decades to come.

                Even as Jim Crow laws and customs limited political 
                participation and access to public accommodations, 
                African Americans maintained visions of freedom and 
                built strong community institutions. Ownership of land, 
                access to education, and churches and civic 
                organizations that took root during the Reconstruction 
                Era laid the foundation for the modern civil rights 
                movement.

                The many objects of historic interest described above 
                stand testament to the formative role of the 
                Reconstruction Era--and the enormous contributions of 
                those who made it possible--in our shared history.

                WHEREAS, section 320301 of title 54, United States Code 
                (known as the ``Antiquities Act''), authorizes the 
                President, in his discretion, to declare by public 
                proclamation historic landmarks, historic and 
                prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic 
                or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands 
                owned or controlled by the Federal Government to be 
                national monuments, and to reserve as a part thereof 
                parcels of land, the limits of which shall be confined 
                to the smallest area compatible with the proper care 
                and management of the objects to be protected;

                WHEREAS, the Beaufort National Historic Landmark 
                District, which contains many objects of historic 
                interest including the Old Beaufort Firehouse, was 
                designated in 1973; and the Penn School National 
                Historic Landmark District, which also contains many 
                objects of historic interest including Darrah Hall and 
                the Brick Baptist Church, was designated in 1974;

                WHEREAS, the Camp Saxton Site was listed in the 
                National Register of Historic Places in 1995;

                WHEREAS, portions of the former Camp Saxton Site are 
                located today on lands administered by the U.S. 
                Department of the Navy at Naval Support Facility 
                Beaufort, South Carolina;

                WHEREAS, Penn Center, Inc., has donated to the United 
                States fee title to Darrah Hall at Penn Center, St. 
                Helena Island, South Carolina, with appurtenant 
                easements, totaling approximately 3.78 acres of land 
                and interests in land;

[[Page 6171]]

                WHEREAS, Brick Baptist Church has donated to the United 
                States a historic preservation easement in the Brick 
                Baptist Church and associated cemetery located on St. 
                Helena Island, South Carolina, an interest in land of 
                approximately 0.84 acres;

                WHEREAS, the Paul H. Keyserling Revocable Trust and 
                Beaufort Works, LLC, have donated to the United States 
                fee title to the Old Beaufort Firehouse at 706 Craven 
                Street, Beaufort, South Carolina, approximately 0.08 
                acres of land;

                WHEREAS, the designation of a national monument to be 
                administered by the National Park Service would 
                recognize the historic significance of Brick Baptist 
                Church, Darrah Hall, Camp Saxton, and the Old Beaufort 
                Firehouse, and provide a national platform for telling 
                the story of Reconstruction;

                WHEREAS, it is in the public interest to preserve and 
                protect these sites;

                NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the 
                United States of America, by the authority vested in me 
                by section 320301 of title 54, United States Code, 
                hereby proclaim the objects identified above that are 
                situated upon lands and interests in lands owned or 
                controlled by the Federal Government to be the 
                Reconstruction Era National Monument (monument) and, 
                for the purpose of protecting those objects, reserve as 
                a part thereof all lands and interests in lands owned 
                or controlled by the Federal Government within the 
                boundaries described on the accompanying map, which is 
                attached to and forms a part of this proclamation. The 
                reserved Federal lands and interests in lands encompass 
                approximately 15.56 acres. The boundaries described on 
                the accompanying map are confined to the smallest area 
                compatible with the proper care and management of the 
                objects to be protected.

                All Federal lands and interests in lands within the 
                boundaries described on the accompanying map are hereby 
                appropriated and withdrawn from all forms of entry, 
                location, selection, sale, or other disposition under 
                the public land laws, from location, entry, and patent 
                under the mining laws, and from disposition under all 
                laws relating to mineral and geothermal leasing.

                The establishment of the monument is subject to valid 
                existing rights. If the Federal Government acquires any 
                lands or interests in lands not owned or controlled by 
                the Federal Government within the boundaries described 
                on the accompanying map, such lands and interests in 
                lands shall be reserved as a part of the monument, and 
                objects identified above that are situated upon those 
                lands and interests in lands shall be part of the 
                monument, upon acquisition of ownership or control by 
                the Federal Government.

                The Secretary of the Interior shall manage the monument 
                through the National Park Service, pursuant to 
                applicable legal authorities, consistent with the 
                purposes and provisions of this proclamation. The 
                Secretary of the Interior shall prepare a management 
                plan within 3 years of the date of this proclamation, 
                with full public involvement, and to include 
                coordination with Penn Center, Inc., Brick Baptist 
                Church, the Department of the Navy, Atlantic Marine 
                Corps Communities, LLC, the City of Beaufort, and the 
                Town of Port Royal. The management plan shall ensure 
                that the monument fulfills the following purposes for 
                the benefit of present and future generations: (1) to 
                preserve and protect the objects of historic interest 
                associated with the monument, and (2) to interpret the 
                objects, resources, and values related to the 
                Reconstruction Era. The management plan shall, among 
                other things, set forth the desired relationship of the 
                monument to other related resources, programs, and 
                organizations, both within and outside the National 
                Park System.

                The Secretary of the Navy, or the Secretary of the 
                Navy's designee, shall continue to have management 
                authority over Department of the Navy lands within the 
                monument boundary at the Camp Saxton site, including 
                the authority to control access to these lands. The 
                Secretaries of the Navy

[[Page 6172]]

                and the Interior shall enter into a memorandum of 
                agreement that identifies and assigns the 
                responsibilities of each agency related to such lands, 
                the implementing actions required of each agency, and 
                the processes for resolving interagency disputes.

                The National Park Service is directed to use applicable 
                authorities to seek to enter into agreements with 
                others to address common interests and promote 
                management efficiencies, including provision of visitor 
                services, interpretation and education, establishment 
                and care of museum collections, and preservation of 
                historic objects.

                Given the location of portions of the monument on an 
                operating military facility, the following provisions 
                concern U.S. Armed Forces actions by a Military 
                Department, including those carried out by the United 
                States Coast Guard:

                    1. Nothing in this Proclamation precludes the 
                activities and training of the Armed Forces; however, 
                they shall be carried out in a manner consistent with 
                the care and management of the objects to the extent 
                practicable.
                    2. In the event of threatened or actual destruction 
                of, loss of, or injury to a monument resource or 
                quality resulting from an incident caused by a 
                component of the Department of Defense or any other 
                Federal agency, the appropriate Secretary or agency 
                head shall promptly coordinate with the Secretary of 
                the Interior for the purpose of taking appropriate 
                action to respond to and mitigate the harm and, if 
                possible, restore or replace the monument resource or 
                quality.
                    3. Nothing in this proclamation or any regulation 
                implementing it shall limit or otherwise affect the 
                U.S. Armed Forces' discretion to use, maintain, 
                improve, or manage any real property under the 
                administrative control of a Military Department or 
                otherwise limit the availability of such real property 
                for military mission purposes.

                Nothing in this proclamation shall be deemed to revoke 
                any existing withdrawal, reservation, or appropriation; 
                however, the monument shall be the dominant 
                reservation.

                Nothing in this proclamation shall be construed to 
                alter the authority or responsibility of any party with 
                respect to emergency response activities within the 
                monument.

                Warning is hereby given to all unauthorized persons not 
                to appropriate, injure, destroy, or remove any feature 
                of this monument and not to locate or settle upon any 
                of the lands thereof.

[[Page 6173]]

                IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this 
                twelfth day of January, in the year of our Lord two 
                thousand seventeen, and of the Independence of the 
                United States of America the two hundred and forty-
                first.
                
                
                    (Presidential Sig.)

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[FR Doc. 2017-01363
Filed 1-18-17; 8:45 a.m.]
Billing code 4310-10-C