“VIII. Hilton Head Island will be divided into School Districts, to conform, as nearly as practicable, to the schools as established by the Freedmen’s Association. In each District there shall be elected one School Commissioner, who will be charged with supplying the wants of the schools, under the direction of the teacher thereof. Every child, between the ages of six and fifteen years, residing within the limits of such School Districts, shall attend school daily, while they are in session, excepting only in case of sickness. Where children are of a suitable age to earn a livelihood, and their services are required by their parents or guardians, and on the written order of the teacher in such School District, may be exempt from attendance, for such time as said order shall specify. And the parents and guardians will be held responsible that said children so attend school, under the penalty of being punished at the discretion of the Council of Administration.” CHAPTER XI. Among the Sea Islanders. The most degraded slaves in the South, it has been commonly testified by Southerners themselves, were to be found in South Carolina and on the sugar plantations of the South-west. Of the South Carolina slaves, the most ignorant and debased, beyond all question, were those on the sea islands about Port Royal. Engaged in unhealthy work, to which none but the coarsest of fiber were likely to be subjected, and steeped in the normal ignorance of the rice swamp and the cotton field, they were likewise isolated on their islands, and shut out from that mysterious transmission of intelligence, concerning their own interests, which seemed to permeate, like a magnetic current, all large communities of negroes.