Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption, 1861–1893: The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina

By Stephen R. Wise, Lawrence S. Rowland, Gerhard Spieler and Alexander Moore

The continued history of Beaufort County, South Carolina, during and following the Civil War

In Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption, 1861-1893, the second of three volumes on the history of Beaufort County, Stephen R. Wise and Lawrence S. Rowland offer details about the district from 1861 to 1893, which influenced the development of the South Carolina and the nation. During a span of thirty years the region was transformed by the crucible of war from a wealthy, slave-based white oligarchy to a county where former slaves dominated a new, radically democratic political economy.

This volume begins where volume I concluded, the November 1861 Union capture and occupation of the Sea Islands clustered around Port Royal Sound, and the Confederate retreat and re-entrenchment on Beaufort District's mainland, where they fended off federal attacks for three and a half years and vainly attempted to maintain their pre-war life. In addition to chronicling numerous military actions that revolutionized warfare, Wise and Rowland offer an original, sophisticated study of the famous Port Royal Experiment in which United States military officers, government officials, civilian northerners, African American soldiers, and liberated slaves transformed the Union-occupied corner of the Palmetto State into a laboratory for liberty and a working model of the post-Civil War New South.

The revolution wrought by Union victory and the political and social Reconstruction of South Carolina was followed by a counterrevolution called Redemption, the organized campaign of Southern whites, defeated in the war, to regain supremacy over African Americans. While former slave-owning, anti-black "Redeemers" took control of mainland Beaufort County, they were thwarted on the Sea Islands, where African Americans retained power and kept reaction at bay. By 1893, elements of both the New and Old South coexisted uneasily side by side as the old Beaufort District was divided into Beaufort and Hampton counties. The Democratic mainland reverted to an agricultural-based economy while the Republican Sea Islands and the town of Beaufort underwent an economic boom based on the phosphate mining industry and the new commercial port in the lowcountry town of Port Royal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Release date: Dec 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781643362823

Book preview

Rebellion, Reconstruction,

and Redemption, 1861–1893

Rebellion, Reconstruction, and

Redemption, 1861–1893

The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina, Volume 2

Stephen R. Wise and Lawrence S. Rowland With Gerhard Spieler

Foreword by Alexander Moore

© 2015 University of South Carolina

Cloth edition published by the University of South Carolina Press, 2015

Ebook edition published in Columbia, South Carolina,

by the University of South Carolina Press, 2022

www.uscpress.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/.

ISBN 978-1-61117-484-7 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-64336-282-3 (ebook)

Front cover illustration: courtesy of Stephen R. Wise

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Alexander Moore

Chapter 1       The Confederates Evacuate the Sea Islands

Chapter 2       Federal Occupation Begins

Chapter 3       The Northern Foothold Expands

Chapter 4       The Port Royal Experiment Begins

Chapter 5       The Confederate Beaufort District

Chapter 6       Arming the Slaves and the Battle of Pocotaligo

Chapter 7       Emancipation

Chapter 8       Initial Tax Sales and the George Washington

Chapter 9       Revival and the Combahee and Bluffton Raids

Chapter 10     The Attack on Charleston, 1863

Chapter 11     Tax Sales and Preemption

Chapter 12     Sea Island Transformation and Military Stalemate

Chapter 13     Battle of Honey Hill

Chapter 14     Battles of Tullifinny

Chapter 15     Sherman Invades the Beaufort District

Chapter 16     The War Ledger

Chapter 17     The Beginning of the New South

Chapter 18     An Uncertain Future

Chapter 19     The District Divided

Chapter 20     Decades of Enterprise, 1873–1893

Chapter 21     Beaufort County’s Maritime Golden Age

Chapter 22     The Counterrevolution of 1876 and the Secession of Hampton County

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

Following page 150

Thomas W. Sherman

Samuel F. Du Pont

Rufus Saxton

Thomas W. Higginson

Salmon Chase

Solomon Peck

Mansfield French

Edward Pierce

Ellen Murray

Laura Towne

Jean Davenport Landers

Charlotte Forten

Thomas Drayton

Stephen Elliott Jr.

William S. Walker

Richard Fuller

Robert Smalls

David Hunter

Ormsby McKnight Mitchel

William Tecumseh Sherman

Edgar Fripp House – Officers’ Hospital

Nathaniel Heyward House – General Saxton’s home

Beaufort City Hall and Contraband Office

Wesley United Methodist Church

East end of Bay Street from Carteret

Bay Street looking west from Carteret

USS Catskill

The Pier at Hilton Head – The Wabash right of center, Vermont far left

Six Generations of Slaves, now Free at Old Fort Plantation

Missionaries at Old Fort Plantation in front of the J. J. Smith House

Refugee Quarters Hilton Head

Mitchelville

Penn School

Elizabeth Botume’s School at Old Fort Plantation

Slave Cabin

Beaufort College Building used as a Freedmen School

Thomas E. Miller

Richard H. Gleaves

William Whipper

Congressman Robert Smalls

Beaufort Public School at Carteret and Washington

US Atlantic Squadron in Port Royal Sound 1877

Beaufort Waterfront 1862: William Elliott III. Nathaniel Heyward and Stuart Houses

Barnwell Castle, Beaufort County Courthouse 1872-1881

Freedmen Cabin on St. Helena Island C1870

Critter House/Freedmen’s Barn C1880

Beaufort Waterfront East C1885

Beaufort Waterfront West C1885

Bay Street Docks Beaufort C1885

Coosaw Mining (Phosphate) Company’s Works

Farmer’s Mine Phosphate Loading Dock

Steam Tug at a Phosphate Loading Dock

Merchant and Civic Leaders, L to R, George Waterhouse, Dr. Henry M. Stuart, MD, Duncan C. Wilson, C. C. Cummings; W. R. Lockwood

Following page 252

Map 1: The Beaufort District & Adjoining Territory

Map 2: The Sea Islands & the Charleston and Savannah Railroad

Map 3: South Carolina Coast 1861

Map 4: The Battle of Port Royal

Map 5: The Battle of Port Royal Ferry

Map 6: Approaches to Fort Pulaski

Map 7: Port Royal Island to Pocotaligo

Map 8: Battle of 2nd Pocotaligo October 1862

Map 9: Port Royal Island

Map 10: Coast Between Savannah and Charleston 1863

Map 11: Lots in the City of Beaufort Fall 1863

Map 12: Beaufort Defenses Spring 1864

Map 13: Beaufort Defenses Fall 1864

Map 14: Northern part Hilton Head 1864

Map 15: Southern part Hilton Head 1864

Map 16: Area of the Broad River Campaign 1864-1865

Map 17: CSA Troop Dispositions Battle of Honey Hill

Map 18: USA Troop Dispositions Battle of Honey Hill

Map 19: DeVeaux and Graham Necks

Map 20: Dec. 9, 1864 Engagement of Tullifinny

Map 21: USA Dispositions DeVeaux Neck Mid- December 1864

Map 22: Beaufort District at Time of Sherman’s Movement

Map 23: Northern part of Beaufort County C1873

Map 24: Southern part of Beaufort County C1873

Map 25: Beaufort and Hampton Counties with Waterways and Phosphate Mines

Acknowledgments

When first asked nearly fifteen years ago to participate in producing a second volume for the history of Beaufort County, I was requested by my coauthor—Lawrence Rowland—to contribute three chapters on the region’s Civil War history. But soon, the three chapters became eighteen as research soon showed that the area that made up the Beaufort District between 1860 and 1866 was one of the Civil War’s most important and critical regions. Not only did the district serve as a location for essential military operations, but it was also a setting for sweeping economic, social, political, educational, and military changes designed to integrate the area’s former slaves into the nation’s citizenry. The story is fascinating, the personalities exceptional, and the consequences monumental. The Beaufort District hosted all aspects of the war and, at least for a brief moment, became an example to the rest of the country for what the future could be.

Over the years that it took to weave the story together, a number of individuals contributed to the completion of The History of Beaufort County, volume 2, 1861–1893. Gerhard Spieler, a colleague and friend, began his work on the history of Beaufort County more than forty years ago. As a title researcher for Beaufort County government, he was in a unique position to appreciate and study the region’s local history. With the assistance of his beloved wife, Ruth DeTreville Spieler, he began his own archival collection in the 1960s. His home, the historic DeTreville House in downtown Beaufort, became a great repository of local history. He has shared his vast knowledge of Beaufort County history to the general public through learned articles in local magazines and a weekly column in the Beaufort Gazette. He generously contributed his expertise and his huge personal archives to the completion of this volume. Gerhard unfortunately passed away before the work could be finished, but his generosity in sharing his knowledge and archives allowed for the eventual completion of this volume.

Alexander Moore, acquisitions editor of the University of South Carolina Press, has shepherded the manuscript from its inception, assisting in research and outlining the required protocol needed to prepare the manuscript. On his own time, he read, edited, and vastly improved the final publication. Alex also went beyond the call of duty by providing this volume with an excellent and thought-provoking introduction. Also, Mary Katherine Webb provided technical, organizational, and editorial assistance to ready the volume for the press. Thanks to Elizabeth Farry who carried out the tedius but necessary task of properly aligning our endnotes and Barbara Thomas Crow who assisted in preparing the corrections to the manuscript.

Many others contributed directly or indirectly to this book. Special thanks to Henry Mintz, who carried out vital research that added tremendously to the narrative. Dave Smoot assisted with research on specific topics, while William Bragg generously provided information and advice on Georgia militia, state troops, and the Battle of Honey Hill. Antonio de la Cova gave insight into the Elliott/Gonzales family, while his wife Carlina shared her knowledge of Civil War black soldiers. Pat Brennan helped with information on Isaac Stevens, while Robert Browning freely gave assistance on Civil War navies and the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron. Tracy Power assisted with information on South Carolina soldiers and politicians. Willis J. Skipper Keith was always handy with needed and insightful information on the war in the lowcounty. Bill Olendorf shared his research on the region, while Cynthia Cole Jenkins was very forthcoming with her knowledge of Beaufort and its history. Ramona Grunden and Colin Brooker also proved to be valuable resources, who never failed to help whenever they could.

Indispensable assistance came from Doyle Clifton who knows the byways and waterways of the lowcountry and produced drafts of the Honey Hill map. Help also came from Dave Ruth and Rick Hatcher who readily supplied information whenever called upon. Evelene and Peter Stevenson generously shared their knowledge of Beaufort. Neil Baxley provided background on the 11th South Carolina and county sheriffs. Sheila Tombe assisted with Shakespeare referenes and Cecily McMillan imparted her knowledge of Coffin Point. Others who shared their research included Wallace Alcorn, Dana MacBean, Jeff Grigg, and Bill and Fran Marscher. Numerous individuals contributed their knowledge of the region’s history people, including Pete Dawson, Claude Dinkins, Jennifer McClung, Donna Elaine Perry, David Lauderdale, George Crist, Brantley Harvey, Daryl Murphy, MaryLou Brewton, and Johnny Bee. The support of everyone was and is greatly appreciated.

Throughout this volume’s production, a number of institutions and their professional personnel have assisted in providing archives, photographs, and other essential research data. This includes but is not limited to the staff of the Beaufort County Library, the Beaufort County Historical Society, the South Carolina Battleground Trust, the South Caroliniana Library, and especially the staff of the University of South Carolina Beaufort Library—Ellen Chamberlain, Geni Flowers, Maie Mendoza, Stephanie Grimm, Dudley Stutz, and Kim Handy. At the South Carolina Historical Society, former executive director Eric Emerson, current publications director Matt Lockhart, and archivist Mike Coker were particularly helpful. Former publication director and editor Stephen Hoffius also shared his knowledge on many lowcountry topics. Tracy Power, Roger Stroup, and Alexia Helsley at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History aided in research, along with enthusiastic support. Our colleague Dr. Walter B. Edgar, who has always encouraged publications of local history, was a great aid to the advancement of this project. Dr. Bryan Howard has been a steady friend whose assistance helped fill in gaps in the manuscript. Ian Hill’s enthusiastic backing and personal knowledge of South Carolina, its people, and history added greatly to the narrative; he also assisted with the procurement of maps. Others whose suggestions added quality to the volume include Allen Stokes, a master of South Carolina history; John M. McCardell; and John Marty Davis. Both part-time residents of Beaufort, John and Marty have become tremendous students of the area’s history and openly shared their own research and knowledge on southern history and Beaufort and its denizens. Marty Davis was particularly generous in providing access to various drafts on his history of Beaufort.

Acknowledgment must be given to Mike Taylor, whose straightforward advice and good humor were always available whenever needed. A man about everything, Mike loved history and was an accomplished researcher, writer, musician, producer, and manager, who gave all he could to promote and safeguard the lowcountry’s history. He is sorely missed.

I also need to thank my parents, Mary and Glenn Wise, who gave me my love for history. Whenever possible they visited Beaufort, and we would travel throughout the area learning about the region’s fascinating history. My father reviewed early manuscripts and gave very pertinent suggestions to improve the book.

Special thanks and appreciation go to my wife, Alice Parsons Wise, whom I first met in Beaufort and who shares my love of the region’s history and beauty. She worked tirelessly to proof and edit the manuscript, providing suggestions and pointing out sections that needed clarification and modification. Without her love and patience this book could not have been properly completed.

STEPHEN R. WISE

Foreword

Publication of volume 2, 1861–1893, of The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina, is a signal event in the writing of South Carolina and southern history. This is the second of a three-volume history of Beaufort District and County that spans five centuries. Volume 1 was published in 1996. Publication of volume 3 will complete a research and writing project that had its origin in the 1970s. The authors of volumes 2 and 3, Lawrence S. Rowland and Stephen R. Wise, invited me to write forewords to those volumes. I have a small but long-time association with the project. I was a coauthor of volume 1, in company with Lawrence Rowland and the late George C. Rogers Jr. As acquisitions editor for the University of South Carolina Press, I worked with Wise and Rowland to bring volumes 2 and 3 to completion.

Their invitation gives me the liberty to promote appreciation of the volumes and to make some observations on the Beaufort region and on the craft of writing local history. Volume 2 begins in medias res; chapter 1 is continuous with the final chapter of volume 2. This volume begins with the Federal capture and occupation of Port Royal Sound and the Confederate retreat and reentrenchment on Beaufort District’s mainland in November 1861 and carries the story through the war and Reconstruction up to the year 1893. Volume 2 offers readers an original, sophisticated study of the famous Port Royal Experiment, in which United States military officers, government officials, civilian northerners, and liberated slaves transformed the Union-occupied sea island corner of the Palmetto State into a laboratory for liberty and a working model of the post–Civil War New South. As the experiment was underway, white South Carolinians on the mainland struggled to preserve their prewar lifestyles. This situation ignited political revolutions in that small corner of South Carolina that changed forever the state’s history and the history of the South. Volume 2 dramatically recounts the first revolution that afforded thousands of black South Carolinians the power to raise themselves from chattel slavery to American citizenship and self-determination. It also tells stories of a second revolution, ironically called Redemption, in which whites, defeated in war, sought to take back from black southerners their newly won liberties. Whether they called themselves Red Shirts, taxpayers, Bourbons, or simply Democrats, Beaufort and South Carolina whites sought to impose upon their fellow citizens a post–Civil War racial caste system that differed little from antebellum slavery. The partial success of this reactionary revolution constitutes the post–Civil War chapters of volume 2 and the early chapters of volume 3. Beaufort African Americans, led by Robert Smalls, Thomas E. Miller, and other luminaries, kept Jim Crow at bay longer in their home county than in most other parts of the state. Had the Hurricane of 1893, the first revolution described in volume 3, not struck Port Royal and Beaufort with such fury, the county’s fusion politics might have become a successful model of biracial democracy in the New South.

Interested readers will wish to know why Beaufort County merits the devotion of three large volumes to a region that today encompasses Beaufort, Jasper, and Hampton Counties in the southernmost corner of a state that ranks twenty-fourth in population and forty-second in per capita income in the nation’s fifty states. The population of these counties amounted in 2010 to about 208,000, less than one sixteenth of the state’s population.

To answer that big question is the task of this foreword and the one that will accompany volume 3. A simple answer is that the history of Beaufort County from 1861 to 1893 and from 1893 to 2006 is a reflecting (not refracting) mirror of the state’s history and of the South’s coastal regions since 1861. The mirror reveals the authors’ sophisticated knowledge of South Carolina and the Civil War. The Beaufort County mirror also resembles the weird sisters’ magic mirror in act 4 of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. As Macbeth peered into the mirror held by the illusory child-king, he perceived generations of Scottish history yet to come. Attentive readers of volumes 2 and 3 can look into the work and view South Carolina history and southern history from 1861 to the present age and into the twenty-first century.

An important theme of volume 1 is that Beaufort County had been both a geographical and political frontier from 1514 until November 7, 1861, the day the big gun shoot dragged Beaufort and South Carolina into the modern age. For two centuries before the American Revolution, the Beaufort region was a debatable land between Spanish, British, and French intrigues to create a North American empire. The region was also an embattled frontier between all Europeans and the indigenous Native Americans. Archaeologists and historians have discovered that even before European discovery the region was the site of complicated intra-Indian struggles between three groups: those who inhabited the region, those who customarily (or conveniently) passed through it, and those outsiders who wished to claim control of it. For all of these groups through the centuries, the Beaufort frontier was sometimes geographical, political, ideological, economic, and cultural. In the long view, those three generic groups—inhabitants, visitors, and immigrants—have changed their identities, but their relationships within the Beaufort region have been remarkably similar through the centuries.

The Yamasee War, European wars of empire, and the founding of Georgia were crises in Beaufort and South Carolina history. Several campaigns of the American Revolution were fought in the terrestrial and maritime Beaufort frontier. Beaufort was an economic frontier centered on rice and sea island cotton that created a cash-crop, slave-sustained empire that created one of the wealthiest communities in the United States. Although sophisticated in wealth and influence, much of the region kept its untamed, marginal character well into the nineteenth century. Beaufort District was a crucible of political extremism. Nullification, state’s rights, and secession talk found fertile soil as Rhetts, DeTrevilles, Chaplins, and Seabrooks advocated white superiority and secession to liberate themselves from what they saw as a threatening federal government that their forebears had helped create.

Capture and emancipation by the Union navy and army in November 1861 revolutionized Beaufort more profoundly than the American Revolution and the sea island cotton kingdom. Volume 2 delineates in remarkable detail the character of that revolution. Chattel slavery was destroyed; thousands of enslaved South Carolinians achieved liberty and personhood; and radically new social and economic policies found fertile ground for experiment. Post-1861 Beaufort was another frontier where the modern world supplanted the Old South. Armies clashed in battles and skirmishes, while contrabands, entrepreneurs, social engineers, and opportunists—all of them representative frontier personalities—fashioned a set of American values that looked to the future centuries. It was up to Beaufortonians, South Carolinians, and American citizens to interpret correctly the images revealed in the weird sisters’ mirror.

The rediscovery and modification of Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis in the long history of Beaufort County is one theme of Wise and Rowland’s magnum opus. In the 1890s Turner observed that the closing of the western geographical frontier marked an end to American exceptionalism. Frontier settlers through the centuries had been aggressive experimenters in democratic forms, economic innovation, and construction of a unique culture. The authors of The History of Beaufort County have demonstrated that the Beaufort region has long been identified as an interior frontier. They have identified the operation of frontier values as the region has moved through centuries of political, economic, and cultural experimentation. Greater Beaufort proves to be one of those locales. Another theme important to Wise and Rowland was well expressed in 1988 by George Calvin Rogers Jr., the dean of twentieth-century South Carolina history. In July 1988 Rogers published Names, Not Numbers, in the William and Mary Quarterly (3rd series, vol. 45, no. 3 [July 1988]: 574–9), an essay in which he extolled history writing that emphasized people and places—all proper nouns—in contrast to history writing based upon grand theories, statistics, and sociological factors. His History of Georgetown County (1970) demonstrated rigorous research, but it was also a model of the names, not numbers genre. The methodological rigor of Georgetown County is found in volumes 2 and 3, coupled with the power of original storytelling. Rogers was Rowland’s dissertation supervisor, hence the origin of volume 1 and Rogers’s coauthorship. Steve Wise’s account of occupied Beaufort District sits squarely in the names, not numbers tradition. He is a master of the official records created during the war and of the voluminous secondary literature of the war and Reconstruction. He brings all that knowledge to bear, but he also weaves into his narrative countless first-hand accounts of the occupation of Beaufort District and the skirmishes, battles, and forays by Union and Confederate troops that make for a thick, convincing narrative fabric.

This dense documentation gives volume 2 a powerful, timeless verisimilitude reminiscent of the catalogue of ships in Homer’s Iliad. Certainly, many historians and novelists have named the Civil War the American Iliad. Of those works Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative (1958–74) most deliberately linked the Civil War to the ten-year campaign against Troy. The fact that Foote took longer to complete The Civil War than the Trojan War lasted in myth and history says something about the convoluted history and the cultural importance of America’s war with itself. Charles P. Roland’s An American Iliad: The Story of the Civil War (2002) and Julia A. Stern’s Mary Chesnut’s Civil War Epic (2010) also discerned ample Trojan War contexts in their monographs. In fact, Steve Wise has been author and historical consultant on one such work, America’s Iliad: The Siege of Charleston, a television documentary released in 2007, which examined the city’s experience from 1861 to 1865 in the light of the Trojan War. Hence, to link volume 2 to the works of Homer is not a literary flourish but a just assessment of the tone and narrative power of the volume.

It is Wise’s geologic reconstruction of Union Beaufort and, indeed, of the Port Royal Experiment that ring truest in comparison with the Iliad. The heroic activities of many men and women are woven into the narrative. Union officers included Isaac Ingalls Stevens, Rufus Saxton, Quincy Gillmore, John G. Foster, Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel, Thomas West Sherman, and William Tecumseh Sherman. Northern immigrant do-gooders Edward Lille Pierce, Mansfield French, Charlotte Forten, Laura Towne, and Frances Gage found renown as they revolutionized Beaufort. Against them stood white South Carolinians, Beaufortonians, and Confederates fighting to defend the district’s prewar society. Thomas Fenwick Drayton, Charles Jones Colcock, Edmund Rhett, Ambrosio Gonzales, and many members of the Barnwell, Heyward, and Cuthbert families rallied to defend their homes and property. Robert E. Lee, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, John C. Pemberton, Stephen Elliott, and William S. Walker were worthy Confederate opponents who resisted the northern invasion and their former slaves’ newfound freedom.

Homer’s catalog of ships was a literary device that grounded the Iliad in verisimilitude, the most important element in great literature. Wise and Rowland have provided, through their deep research and dedication to names, not numbers, a verisimilitude born of historical accuracy. It will be a long time before any future historians can write a counternarrative to the Civil War and Reconstruction depicted in volume 2.

Rowland continues the names, not numbers method as he narrates stories of Reconstruction and reaction, the so-called Redemption in which white South Carolina Democrats battled their former slaves and a new class of African American Republicans for control of their native region. Post–Civil War Beaufort County, especially after the secession of white-dominated Hampton County in 1878, continued in a contrarian manner the political revolution that began the day of the big gun shoot. Union occupation, the Port Royal Experiment, the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, and the sales and redistribution of plantation lands transformed Beaufort County into a distinctive New South political entity, one that was multiracial in its government, filled with entrepreneurial spirit and economic prosperity, and an example of the war-defined federalism of the United States.

Volume 3 will carry forward Beaufort’s frontier character into unexpected territories: economic, cultural, and even aesthetic histories of the twentieth century. Volume 3 will also present a challenge to the new frontier culture of 1890s Beaufort. The Hurricane of 1893 is the starting point for volume 3, and that storm proved to be another revolution. The social and environmental destruction wrought by that gigantic storm reintroduced—in an awesome manner—the force of nature in Beaufort history. Volume 2 narrates the events and influences of political revolution. Volume 3 will narrate the events and impact of environment and human ecology upon that same corner of South Carolina.

ALEXANDER MOORE

Chapter 1

The Confederates Evacuate the Sea Islands

O Massa, God A’mighty come an de Yankees come wid him

Ever since the arrival of its first inhabitants, the people of Beaufort County, South Carolina, had been tied to the ocean and the region’s internal waterways. It was here that communities flourished, then fell to new invaders. The pattern was repeated many times. The American Indians were forced out by the Europeans—Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Englishmen—who vied with each other to control Port Royal Sound, a body of water said to be finest natural harbor in the New World. When the eighteenth-century wars for empire ended, the English controlled the sound. Soon an economy based upon slavery and cash crops was established. Prosperity was disrupted during the American Revolution when British warships swept into Port Royal Sound and occupied Beaufort, the area’s principal community. After the revolution the residents regained their lifestyles and expanded their slave- and cash-crop-based culture. They were not as fortunate in 1861, when another maritime invasion shattered their civilization beyond recovery.

Although Port Royal’s value was known for centuries, it was not until the 1850s that the United States Coast Survey intensely investigated the sound. The hydrographers’ findings confirmed long-held beliefs about the region’s natural qualities. Declared the finest harbor south of the Chesapeake, Port Royal Sound boasted a two-and-a-half-mile entrance and water deep enough for the nation’s largest frigate. Once in the sound, the entire United States Navy could ride at anchor in the bay which is perfectly healthy and secure.

Despite its distinctive merits, Port Royal never developed into a viable port. Beaufort, the area’s largest community, was deemed of no commercial importance. During the summer months, the area planters inhabited the town. With two large shops and many smaller stores, the town served as the general depot for supplies for the plantations of Port Royal Island. Beaufort’s many fine residences were occupied only in the summer, when the population numbered over a thousand white inhabitants. The town also contained sixty-four foreign-born residents and twenty-nine free people of color. Railroad connections from Beaufort to the mainland had been proposed and a right of way mapped but never built. Hence, the town remained isolated except for steamship service on the inland waterway from Charleston to northern Florida.

The closest rail line was the Charleston and Savannah Railroad. The tracks that connected these cities were built on lofty wooden trestles and earthen causeways across the Combahee, Pocotaligo, Tullifinny, and the Coosawhatchie Rivers. The final bridge over the Savannah River was built in the spring of 1861. The railroad was the region’s principal transportation and commercial link to the rest of the South and the nation.

The railway did not follow the highway between Charleston and Savannah, bypassing many existing communities. Pocotaligo and Grahamville were missed, while Coosawhatchie and Hardeeville became railroad centers. Train stations created potentially new commercial centers at Gopher Hill, Yemassee Station, Pocotaligo Station, and Salkehatchie. Although there were no dock facilities in the Port Royal region, small vessels could navigate to within a mile of the railroad by navigating up the Broad and into the Pocotaligo and Coosawhatchie Rivers.¹

The United States government took no steps to defend the Port Royal region, but the local citizens began preparations in the 1850s for a possible war of secession. In 1852 the Beaufort arsenal, home to the Beaufort Volunteer Artillery, was expanded and militia drills increased. In 1858 the sea islands’ militia was reorganized into a three-company battalion that was part of the 12th South Carolina Militia Regiment. Once South Carolina seceded, many men from the area participated in the siege and bombardment of Fort Sumter. With the Federals removed from Charleston Harbor, the Confederates turned their attention to Port Royal.²

In May 1861 the Confederate commander in South Carolina, General Pierre G. T. Beauregard, surveyed the coast. Colonel George P. Elliott of Beaufort and Elliott’s brother-in-law, the Cuban-born revolutionary Ambrosio J. Gonzales, assisted him. Following the survey, the state constructed numerous earthen fortifications strategically placed to deny enemy vessels access to any navigable inlets between Charleston and Savannah.³

Forts guarded the mouths of the North and South Edisto Rivers and the entrance to the Ashepoo River. A small work at Sams Point on Lady’s Island watched over the Coosaw River, which led to Brickyard Creek and the Beaufort River. At Port Royal two forts guarded the sound’s entrance. To the north, at Bay Point on Phillips’ Island, was Fort Beauregard. Fort Walker stood across the sound on Hilton Head Island. To watch over Calibogue Sound and the channel that separated Hilton Head from the mainland, a battery was built on the island’s western tip. All these forts were built under the direction of state and Confederate engineers, who supervised slave laborers.

Beauregard did not remain in South Carolina to see the completion of his coastal defenses. That responsibility fell to Ohio-born Brigadier General Roswell Sabine Ripley, who took command of South Carolina in August 1861. Though hampered by a lack of supplies and heavy guns, Ripley and his commander at Port Royal, Brigadier General Thomas Fenwick Drayton, believed their fortifications could keep the enemy from capturing the sea islands and reaching the Charleston and Savannah Railroad. Their confidence stemmed from conventional military thought, which held that one gun on land was worth ten aboard a ship. Land-based gunners could easily target slow moving, sail-powered warships. According to one account, Major Francis D. Lee, who oversaw Fort Walker’s construction, proudly told his slave laborers that the Devil couldn’t take it—God Almighty himself couldn’t take it.

In earlier wars land-based artillery may have been superior to warships, but when the Union squadron under Flag Officer Samuel Francis Du Pont attacked Forts Beauregard and Walker on November 7, 1861, a new era in naval warfare had begun. The Union vessels were steamers that mounted larger and more numerous cannons than the Confederates had in their forts. In less than five hours, the southerners were defeated. As the Confederates fled, a slave who had heard Major Lee’s boast called out to him, O Massa, God A’mighty come an de Yankees come wid him.

The Confederates abandoned their garrisons and fled to the mainland before the Federals could seize the inland waterways. The attempt to stop the northerners at the initial point of attack had been a dismal failure. To prevent the defeat from becoming a catastrophe, a new defensive strategy had to be developed.⁴

The big gun shoot, as the local blacks called the Battle of Port Royal, shattered Beaufort’s prewar society. Though General Ripley had urged the population to leave, the majority of the residents stayed. Some, expecting a southern victory, had gathered to watch the battle. Instead, they witnessed the quick destruction of the antebellum society that had required nearly 150 years to create. Some civilians boarded steamships for Charleston, while others hastily packed a few essentials and fled inland. Some tried to force their slaves to follow, but with few exceptions most of the Africans refused to go. They rightly saw the arrival of the Union military as ending their servitude.

Into this chaotic situation came General Robert E. Lee, the area’s new commander. Considered by his peers to be the most talented officer in the regular army, Lee’s Confederate career had not yet lived up to this promise. During the summer of 1861, while in charge of forces defending western Virginia, he tangled with quarrelsome, incompetent subordinates. Unable to coordinate an effective campaign, Lee lost the majority of the region to the Federals and received the nickname Granny Lee for what was perceived as his reluctance to engage the enemy. Reassigned to Richmond, he was soon ordered to take command of the Departments of South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida, a vast coastal region threatened by naval assault. While Lee understood the danger, he also perceived the situation as similar to the one he had faced in Virginia. He found his local commanders to be petty and jealous. State governors and other politicians constantly interfered with his decisions. Also, he faced a manpower shortage as the one-year enlistments of his soldiers were nearly over. Before accepting the command, Lee gained assurances from Confederate president Jefferson Davis that his authority would be absolute. However, Lee still had to call upon both his military expertise and his personal diplomatic skills to succeed in his command.⁵

Lee was given charge of the new Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida on November 5, 1861; the day after, Federal warships began to assemble off Port Royal Sound. When he arrived at Coosawhatchie on the evening of November 7, Lee met General Ripley, who reported the devastating Confederate defeat.⁶

Ripley had brought the soldiers off the sea islands and positioned them to defend the all-important Charleston and Savannah Railroad. But the troops had left behind most of their equipment, clothing, and provisions. They had lost all of their artillery. From Hilton Head, nearly one thousand men under General Thomas F. Drayton had re-formed outside Bluffton near the New River Bridge. Seven hundred troops from Bay Point under Colonel Richard G. M. Donovant had marched through Beaufort to Garden’s Corner. Although the Georgia troops who had manned Hilton Head had returned to Savannah, the remaining soldiers were soon joined by two North Carolina and two South Carolina infantry regiments, a South Carolina cavalry regiment, and the South Carolina Siege Train artillery. Lee assembled his reinforcements along the headwaters of the Broad River and immediately reported the situation to Judah P. Benjamin, the Confederate secretary of war. Benjamin, who had spent time in Beaufort as a child, received dispatches from Lee informing him that the enemy had secured Port Royal Sound and commanded all the sea islands. Northern warships patrolled the inland waterways as far up the Broad River as the mouth of the Pocotaligo River and even into the Coosawhatchie and Tullifinny Rivers. Lee wrote, We have no guns that can resist their batteries and have no resource but to prepare to meet them in the field.⁷

Lee hoped he would have time to prepare a proper defense, bring in reinforcements, and organize his men for combat. Aggressive by nature, Lee believed in offensive warfare. He embraced Napoleon Bonaparte’s dictum to have a stout defense for his depots, while his field army sallied forth against the enemy. But before he could attack the invaders, he had to prepare the groundwork. Even before he arrived in Beaufort District, Lee knew that the South did not have enough men or cannons to defend every inlet. He faced the fact that strategic withdrawals were necessary. He planned to pull his forces from isolated posts and concentrate them at Savannah, Charleston, and along the Charleston and Savannah Railroad.

Lee may have been implementing his father’s theories on coast defense, as well as proposals found in an 1826 army report by Major Joseph G. Totten, which detailed a coastal policy designed to secure the nation’s coast from enemy assaults. In his thesis Totten proposed a system of harbor forts manned by regular troops to delay an enemy’s advance until local militia could be mustered. Once ready, the militia, with the men in the forts, would defeat the enemy and drive them from the coast. Lee expanded Totten’s concept by adding the element of rail transportation. Garrisons at Savannah and Charleston were to be kept strong enough to meet initial attacks. Before the enemy could gain the advantage, reinforcements would arrive via the railroad.⁸

Another plan Lee took into consideration was a recommendation by Colonel Ambrosio Gonzales, the Cuban revolutionary and son-in-law of William Elliott III. A proponent of a Cuba free from Spanish rule but tied to the slave-oriented South, Gonzales had been active in prewar schemes to enlist United States citizens into Cuban filibustering actions, which acquainted him with Jefferson Davis and a number of military officers, including Gustavus Smith and Robert E. Lee.

When the war began, Gonzales readily joined his in-laws and the Confederacy in their bid for freedom. He volunteered and was soon appointed inspector of troops and coastal defenses. Gonzales recognized that the coastline was vulnerable to attack by the Federal navy, which could cut off and capture isolated fortifications. A month before the attack on Port Royal, Gonzales proposed to the War Department a plan that called for the use of flying batteries. Armed with rifled siege guns, these units could be moved to preconstructed fortifications or behind natural barriers to challenge enemy attacks. Gonzales’s suggestion was backed by the Confederate Engineer Bureau, and one day before the big gun shoot, Gonzales became Lee’s unofficial aide-de-camp and commander of South Carolina’s Siege Train.⁹

Lee realized that his defenses were only as strong as their weakest link, and in November and December, his greatest fear was that the Federals would sever the railroad in Beaufort District near the headwaters of the Broad River. If the Yankees cut the railway, they could then send flying columns north and south, taking Savannah and Charleston from the rear. To thwart such a movement, Lee assembled troops in the region stretching from the Savannah River to the Combahee River.

On November 8 Lee established his headquarters in an abandoned house at Coosawhatchie and assembled his staff. Though he referred to the place as a decrepit and deserted village, its central location afforded him the best position to direct his troops. Lee left Ripley at Coosawhatchie to monitor the headwaters of the Broad River, pressed on to Savannah, and then to Charleston, where he met with Francis W. Pickens, the South Carolina governor. When he returned to Coosawhatchie on November 18, Lee found a report from Ripley that outlined the situation in Beaufort District.¹⁰

In ten days Ripley had restored order and established a new defensive line stretching from the Combahee River to the Savannah River. Cavalry units watched over potential landing sites, while infantry and artillery stood ready in newly built fortifications. Brigadier General Thomas F. Drayton, the onetime defender of Port Royal Sound, commanded the district’s southern region. Lieutenant Colonel Charles J. Colcock’s mounted militia patrolled the waterways near Bluffton. Farther inland, Colonels William C. Heyward’s 9th and William D. DeSaussure’s 15th South Carolina Regiments guarded Hardeeville and manned the new forts built on the road from Hardeeville to Bluffton and the mouth of the New River at Red Bluff. Along the Broad River, Captain James D. Trezevant’s cavalry company watched Boyd’s and Tenney’s Landings, while Colonel Clingman’s 25th North Carolina built a strong fortification along the Honeywood Road at a place called Honey Hill to guard the approaches to the Grahamville depot. Near the mouth of Bee’s Creek at Huguenin’s Landing, Colonel Gonzales oversaw the construction of a massive battery manned by James D. Radcliffe’s 8th North Carolina Infantry Regiment. To further impede any waterborne enemy advances, Colonel Gonzales placed obstructions in the Coosawhatchie River while a Mr. Gregory blocked the Tullifinny.

Colonel Oliver E. Edwards’s 13th South Carolina regiment was stationed at the Coosawhatchie railhead, while a few miles north at Pocotaligo was Colonel Richard G. M. Dunovant’s 12th South Carolina and Colonel James Jones’s 14th South Carolina. William E. Martin’s state militia cavalry picketed the area from Pocotaligo east to the Port Royal Ferry and north to the Combahee River.¹¹

Besides setting up the initial defensive positions, Ripley had ordered raids onto the abandoned sea islands to destroy cotton and to gather up slaves before the Federals seized them, but no raids were carried out before Ripley was ordered to Charleston. Although a competent officer and skilled artilleryman and engineer, Ripley was an irascible, irritating subordinate who had little use for Lee. Some of his expressions may have come from anger at being superseded by the Virginian or from his fondness for alcohol. Whatever the reasons, Ripley’s opinion of Lee was well known. Lee did not confront Ripley or remove him from command; instead, he simply moved the troublesome subordinate to Charleston and personally took control of operations in Beaufort District.¹²

Conditions were critical along the headwaters of the Broad River. Lee even received a resolution from the Beaufort District citizens requesting him to declare martial law. In reply to William Elliott III, Edmund Rhett, and Leroy Youmans, Lee explained that he saw no need to suspend civil laws. The citizenry could manage their affairs while Lee took on the task of handling the military situation.¹³

Soon the fifty-four-year-old, gray-bearded commanding officer was seen everywhere overseeing the construction of fortifications. He assembled a skilled staff, which included such specialists as Colonel Joseph Ives, chief engineer, and Armistead Long, chief of artillery. Lee also employed naval officer Lieutenant John N. Maffitt and Captain John R. F. Tattnall of the Confederate Marine Corps. These men and others turned in yeoman service, but the general remained the guiding force behind the fortification of Beaufort District and coastal South Carolina.¹⁴

At night Lee returned to an abandoned house in Coosawhatchie, reportedly belonging to Mrs. George Chisolm Mackay. From there Lee wrote dispatches, including requests to his superiors for more men and artillery. When he had time, he penned letters to his family. In a note to his daughters Annie and Agnes, Lee told them of seeing Mrs. Mackay, mother of his West Point classmate and friend John Mackay, and her daughters, Margaret, the widow of Dr. Ralph Ems Elliott, and Eliza, now Mrs. Joseph Stiles, all of whom Lee knew in 1829–31, when he was stationed at Savannah’s Fort Pulaski. In another letter to Annie, written on December 8, Lee wrote of how warm it was, and to prove it, I enclose some violets I plucked in the yard of the deserted house I now occupy.¹⁵

While his thoughts were always with his family, Lee kept a constant eye on the enemy. On occasion he would ride to a vantage point from which to view their fleet. As yet the Yankees seemed loath to leave the protection of their big ships, and Lee used this respite to train his men. His troops, some six thousand men, were a mixture of militia, untrained state units, and regiments newly federalized for Confederate service. For the most part they were raw and, according to Ripley, needed severe discipline and constant vigilance. Lee knew their weaknesses and used them primarily to build new defenses. However, always the aggressor, he also approved expeditions to Beaufort and the sea islands.¹⁶

The raids had been called for in mid-November, when General Ripley directed Colonel William Martin to lead his militia cavalrymen onto Port Royal and St. Helena islands. The forays were intended to remove citizens, their slaves, and other property and to destroy cotton, food supplies, and other material useful to the enemy. Colonel Martin had been unable to organize the expeditions. Few volunteers came forward and none of the refugee planters could be induced to guide the attack. In early December the idea was revived. This time Martin was to work in conjunction with Captain Stephen Elliott, commander of the Beaufort Artillery. Elliott, a Beaufort native and well-known sportsman, did not wait for Martin. On the night of December 4, he led about twenty-five men into Beaufort. For the men of the Beaufort Artillery, the raid was a homecoming. The muster roll of the unit was a roll call of the Beaufort elite. It contained Fullers, Barnwells, Elliotts, Stuarts, and Fripps. On Bay Street stood the homes of Captain Elliott, his father, and his grandfather. The strike gave them the opportunity to assuage some of the pain of defeat they had suffered a month earlier.

As they entered Beaufort, they noticed only one light, and the only greeting came from a barking dog. The town was clear of enemy and the river empty of warships. They rode on through the town along the shell road to Battery Plantation. Elliott then sent three men to Dr. Thomas Fuller’s plantation on Parris Island, where they destroyed seventy bales of cotton and seven hundred bushels of corn. Though the island was crowded with slaves escaping their fugitive masters, the raiders were unable to carry off any slaves, and the men rejoined their comrades at Battery Plantation. Elliott then had his troopers burn cotton and provisions at nearby plantations before returning to the mainland.¹⁷

Surprised at Elliott’s quick move, Colonel Martin requested permission from Lee to carry out his own strike. At midnight on December 5, Martin sent scouts onto Port Royal Island. The men rode into Beaufort and found the town vacant. When this news reached Martin, he immediately organized two columns of horsemen from the Allendale Mounted Guard. He planned to take a screening column of eleven men into Beaufort, while behind them came a stronger force, some fifty men under Major George Washington Oswald. The two units would rendezvous outside Beaufort and then work their way back to the ferry, burning cotton and foodstuffs. To help ensure the raiders’ return if they were cut off from Port Royal Ferry, Martin made arrangements with Captain Maffitt, Colonel Jones, and Major Sams to have flats available for a crossing to Page’s Point.

At 6:00 P.M. Martin and his men crowded their horses onto a flat at Port Royal Ferry and crossed over to Port Royal Island. Guided by Captain Oscar Barnwell and a Dr. Hasell, Martin and the lead party pressed on to Beaufort. About three quarters of a mile from the town, a discharge of muskets surprised the horsemen. Captain Barnwell was wounded, and the party, all save Martin and his son, fled. Racing back to Port Royal Ferry, the shaken riders mistakenly informed Major Oswald that Colonel Martin was dead. Oswald wanted to press on, but the majority of officers refused to budge. He reluctantly led his men back to the mainland.

When Colonel Martin returned to the ferry shortly before midnight, he ordered Oswald and his men to recross the river. They bivouacked until daylight, when they again moved toward Beaufort. On the outskirts of town, Captain Smart’s detachment exchanged fire with enemy pickets, but this time the militiamen did not run. Martin carried out his original plan as he and Major Oswald led separate columns back to Port Royal Ferry burning cotton. By 10:00 P.M. on December 7, with the raid completed, the cavalrymen returned to the mainland.¹⁸

The raiders had burned large stocks of cotton but found no slaves willing to join their fugitive masters. Indeed, Colonel Martin reported that he had to capture all the blacks he encountered lest they convey information to the enemy. This lack of loyalty, coupled with the fact that slaves were taking every opportunity to escape to the Federals, forced the southerners to realize that their human property saw this war as more than a fight between differing economic and political systems. Indeed, from the first Federal cannon fired at Fort Walker, African Americans saw it as a war to bring them freedom. Their masters and even the invading northerners may not have realized it, but the slaves did.

Initially, gangs of slaves requisitioned from neighboring plantations did much of the fortification work. At first, owners gladly provided laborers. However, as more slaves seized opportunities to flee to northern installations and vessels, slave owners began to withhold their human chattels from military work. Lacking the slaves, Lee and his officers were forced to use their soldiers, who resented doing menial tasks. They soon gave Lee, formerly known as Granny Lee in western Virginia, another nickname—the King of Spades.¹⁹

To man the fortifications, Lee and Governor Pickens continuously importuned Richmond for additional officers, infantry, light artillery batteries, and cannons. By early December, Secretary of War Benjamin began shifting troops to Lee’s department. These reinforcements were essential, as the Federals were finally beginning to show some activity. On December 8, 1861, Union troops came ashore at Cunningham Point near Hall’s Island. Lee immediately rushed troops from nearby Page Point and Garden’s Corners to the area, but the Federals withdrew before any engagement occurred.²⁰

To stop any more thrusts, Lee directed his earliest reinforcements to Beaufort District. South Carolina units arrived as they mustered into Confederate service. Additional help came Brigadier General Daniel Smith Donelson’s brigade, which included the 8th and 16th Tennessee and the 60th Virginia Infantry Regiments. Phillips’ Legion of Georgia, along with Captain Rowe Thornton’s and Walter Leake’s batteries of Virginia light artillery, soon followed them.²¹

Brigadier General John C. Pemberton also joined Lee at Coosawhatchie. Pemberton, a skilled artillerist who had been brevetted for bravery in the Mexican War, was, like Ripley, a northern-born West Point graduate who had married a southerner and cast his lot with the Confederacy.²² The arrival of Pemberton and the new troops allowed Lee to divide his department into districts. The Beaufort area was split into the Fourth and Fifth Districts. Pemberton was placed in charge of the Fourth District, which stretched from the Ashepoo River to the headwaters of the Broad River, then along the Colleton River and Ocella Creek to Ferebeeville. Although Coosawhatchie, site of Lee’s headquarters, was within his command area, Pemberton established his control center at Pocotaligo. The Fifth District, under General Thomas Drayton, made up the region from the Colleton River and Ocella Creek to the Savannah River. By the end of December, General Maxey Gregg of Columbia joined Pemberton at Coosawhatchie.²³

The reinforcements and new commanders allowed Lee to plan and build new defenses. Works were begun at Red Bank on the New River, at Page Point and Port Royal Ferry along Whale Branch River, and at Tar Bluff on the Combahee. Besides the batteries, Lee ordered more obstructions to be placed in local rivers and creeks. Among these obstructions were torpedoes—canisters filled with powder designed to explode upon contact with a vessel’s hull.²⁴

Lee also received a valuable addition to his personal entourage, a four-year- old gray horse. The gelding, known as Greenbrier, had arrived in South Carolina with the 60th Virginia Regiment. His owner was Major Thomas L. Broun, but Broun had not come south, and the major’s brother Captain Joseph Broun was using Greenbrier. Lee was delighted to see the horse. The commanding general knew the animal well from his time in Virginia, when he had sought to buy Greenbrier, but his owner had already promised him to Major Broun. Though denied ownership, Lee constantly referred to Greenbrier as my colt. At Coosawhatchie, Lee had a second opportunity to purchase his colt. After corresponding with his brother, Captain Broun offered to give the horse to Lee, but the general refused the gift and paid $175 for Greenbrier. Lee traveled ceaselessly throughout his command on his new mount, and in time the horse became known as Traveller.²⁵

While negotiating for Traveller, Lee spent a lonely Christmas at Coosawhatchie. He spent the day writing his family and working. As he described his routine to his wife, I am here but little myself. The days I am away, I visit some point exposed to the enemy & after our dinner at early candle light, am engaged in writing till 11 or 12 at night. Lee missed his wife and family, but realized that Mary’s condition, rheumatoid arthritis, would make it impossible for her to join him: But this place is too exposed to attack for the residence of a person as hard to move as yourself. Lee closed by saying that the enemy was increasing in strength, but noted that his command was growing slowly, and like their commander, the men were working hard.²⁶

Lee soon realized he had overextended himself. On January 1, 1862, Union troops under the cover of gunboats landed near Port Royal Ferry and forced the Confederates to abandon their new works. Lee did not want this mistake repeated. Soon orders went out and exposed positions such as those at Red Bank were abandoned. Though Lee hoped his defenses would hold, he feared a strong enemy advance against the Charleston and Savannah Railroad. As he wrote Adjutant General Cooper in early January 1862, Lee thought that once his defenses were completed armed and manned, if properly fought, the enemy’s approach ought to be successfully resisted. But his unfinished works required heavy guns, and he had not received the troops expected from Georgia and South Carolina. Without the required men and material Lee feared that the enemy could strike near the head of the Broad River, sever the railroad, and then move on Charleston and Savannah from the land while their fleet attacked from the sea.²⁷

Despite his misgivings, the general had done a remarkable job of stabilizing his command and preparing to meet the enemy. Many of his troops were short-term state enlistees or untested and poorly armed volunteers, but he also had a fair proportion of veteran troops. As each day passed, the green units were being disciplined and hardened to army life. Lee continued to call for reinforcements, and he had a masterful way of ingratiating himself. His superiors always gave him a sympathetic ear if not actual help—so that by early 1862 Lee had more than twice as many men in his department as the Federals had at Port Royal. In Beaufort District he could numerically match any strike against the Charleston and Savannah Railroad.

Lee left Coosawhatchie and on February 3, 1862, established his headquarters in Savannah, which was being threatened by enemy expeditions originating from South Carolina. Northern gunboats sailing up the New River had burned the Box and Lawton Plantations. Union scouts had moved from the New River through Wright’s Cut to Proctor’s Plantation on the Savannah River, where they viewed Fort Jackson and the batteries guarding Savannah. Not only were the raids disturbing, but the Confederates were also alarmed that the slaves in the area were growing insubordinate.²⁸

To offset a possible Union strike at Savannah from the north, Lee directed Pemberton to go to Hardeeville and concert with Drayton a plan to stop Federal incursions toward the Savannah River. Lee also began abandoning isolated posts on the Georgia coast, bringing the heavy artillery and soldiers to Savannah. He dispatched Major George W. Rains to Augusta to help in defending that city and requested that a railroad be built to link Augusta to the Georgia Central Railroad so that, if the Charleston and Savannah Railroad was cut, communications between Charleston and Savannah could be kept up via Columbia and Augusta.²⁹

Although Lee was concentrating his attention on Savannah’s defense, he still viewed the headwaters of Port Royal Sound as the citadel from which he and Pemberton could maneuver north against attacks upon Charleston or turn south to support the Confederates at Savannah. However, Lee found his command weakened by circumstances beyond his control. By mid-February, Federal forces in Tennessee had taken Forts Henry and Donelson, the guardians of Tennessee, forcing the Confederates to evacuate much of the state. At the same time Federal forces overran Confederate defenses on Roanoke Island, thereby capturing the North Carolina sounds. The results of these two disasters were orders from the War Department for Lee to send reinforcements to Tennessee and to pull back any forces on the sea islands that might be cut off and captured. Soon four thousand men were on their way west, but Lee did not take them from Pemberton’s command in Beaufort District, which he still viewed as the linchpin in his defensive scheme.

The prospect of defending his department with a weakened force did not please Lee. For four months he had struggled to perfect his defenses. While he had felt that he had done an adequate job, he was not entirely satisfied. In a March 2, 1862, letter to his daughter Annie, Lee candidly revealed his frustrations with the southern people and the difficulties of commanding his department:

Our people have not been earnest enough, have thought too much of themselves & their ease, & instead of turning out to a man, have been content to nurse themselves & their dimes, & leave the protection of themselves & families to others. To satisfy their consciences, they have been clamorous in criticizing what others have done & endeavoured to prove that they ought to do nothing. This is not the way to accomplish our independence…. I have been doing all I can, with our small means and slow workmen, to defend the cities & coast here. Against ordinary numbers we are pretty strong, but against the hosts our enemies seem to bring everywhere, there is no calculation. But if our men will stand to their work, we shall give them trouble & damage them yet.³⁰

On the same day he wrote to his daughter, Lee received a telegram from Jefferson Davis requesting his presence in Richmond. The telegram was unexpected, but he promptly replied and left Savannah for Richmond the following day. What he found in Richmond was a government in crisis. The disasters at Roanoke Island and in Tennessee had prompted the Confederate Congress to demand a reorganization of Davis’s government. Cabinet officials were shuffled, and Davis brought Lee to Richmond to serve as his adviser.

During his four months along the coast, Lee completed defensive works laid out by Ripley, strengthened them, and augmented the line of fortifications to protect the Charleston and Savannah Railroad. Much of his work was done in Beaufort District, where Lee’s defenses protected key points and served as staging areas for counterattacks.

Lee understood the value of earthworks, but he saw them as a last resort. He believed in maneuver and attack. By his philosophy the enemy had to be defeated before they reached the final defense lines, where superior numbers and equipment would guarantee victory. Although Lee added to Ripley’s line, he held that decisive battles had to be fought away from the fortifications. To this end Lee placed the majority of his field army, the equivalent of three brigades with light artillery, in Beaufort District. This force amounted to one third of his command and was nearly the size of the threatening Federal army. By the time Lee left Coosawhatchie, he had established a strong force ready to react to any enemy movement and took with him a plan that he enacted on a grander scale in Virginia. The genesis of Richmond’s elaborate fortifications and Lee’s successful counterpunches against the invading northern armies had had its genesis in the South Carolina lowcountry.³¹

Lee’s troop deployment was initially kept in place by his successor, Major General John C. Pemberton, who assumed command on March 4 and was officially assigned to the post on March 14. While the Pennsylvania-born general inherited a well-planned defensive scheme, Pemberton had to deal with the same problems that had harried Lee. Besides meddling politicians and insubordinate officers, Pemberton faced a more aggressive enemy and a continuing drain of men and matériel.

By the spring of 1862, the Federals, long dormant at their bases on the sea islands, were beginning to stir. From his headquarters at Pocotaligo, Pemberton carefully watched as northern activity toward Fort Pulaski and Savannah increased. He added to the districts in the southern portion of his department. He placed Brigadier General Maxey Gregg over a smaller Fourth District, which stretched from the Ashepoo River to the East Bank of the Pocotaligo River. A new Fifth District, commanded by Brigadier General Donelson, contained the area from the Pocotaligo to Ocella Creek and Ferebeeville. Brigadier General Drayton’s command area, renamed the Sixth District, covered the territory from Ferebeeville to the Savannah River. To support his lowcountry districts, Pemberton ordered into South Carolina three newly organized but as yet unarmed Georgia regiments.³²

The most sensitive area was Drayton’s command. Union activity was increasing along the mouth and northern bank of the Savannah River, suggesting either an attack on Fort Pulaski or a movement inland against Savannah. Yet an assault against the railroad could not be discounted. Besides using the promised Georgia regiments, Drayton began