In April 1865, Richmond had fallen, and the Confederacy was dying. Robert E. Lee had surrendered his army to Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia. Joseph Johnston was in North Carolina negotiating the surrender of his army to William T. Sherman. But in South Carolina, General Edward Potter was leading 2,500 Union soldiers, including the famed African American regiment the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, through the state's interior, intent on destroying the railroads and equipment. This is the story of Potter's Raid. Using rare and nearly forgotten accounts, historian Tom Elmore has compiled the story of this often-overlooked campaign that featured the last shots of the Civil War in the state that started it.
"This book is a collection of eye-witness accounts, memoirs, newspaper articles, military orders and dispatches.etc., of what is known as ""Potter's Raid."" General Edward E. Potter began the raid from Georgetown, South Carolina, following the Black River areas through Manning and Sumter, South Carolina, to Camden, South Carolina. Then almost turning around to Milford Plantation near Pinewood, South Carolina, before getting word that the war was over. Gen. Potter's troops were made up of white, but mostly black soldiers. They were ruthless, burning and destroying almost any home in their path; leaving in their wake little or no food or shelter for non-combatants. Their foe was made up only a few Confederates that were in the area on furlough due to illness or recovering from wounds, and other volunteers from the civilian population. Gen. Potter's orders were to locate and destroy a train loaded with war materiel and supplies. The goal was finally achieved at a small town (no longer exist) of Manchester, South Carolina.Mr. Thigpen spent many years researching the contents of this book. He will tell you others wrote the contents of this volume. It is primarily a collection of articles printed verbatim penned by participants and witnesses who were present during the Raid.It has been, as nearly as possible, arranged in chronological order. Some of the accounts duplicate, or even contradict, information contained in others. All have been included, for he does not feel qualified to second guess what someone else saw and heard over in the last days of the American Civil War. "Indeed, to do so would be a mistake."The accomplished historian will find many faults with the contents herein and with good reason. Some of the dates for example, the author writing from memory in later years, are known to be off by as much as a month; however, this does nothing to change the story being told by the individual.
(April 5-21, 1865). General Edward E. Potter's raid into lowcountry and central South Carolina in April 1865 was neither massive nor particularly crucial to Union victory. But coming as it did on the heels of William T. Sherman's "March to the Sea" and his destruction of Columbia, the raid witnessed some of the last engagements of the Civil War. The raid also underscored the unchallenged ability of the Union army to reach any part of the Confederacy. Among South Carolinians, the raid produced a rich collection of folklore and reminiscence that still resonates in the state.In March 1865, while the rest of Sherman's army marched into North Carolina, a detachment of Union soldiers drove toward Darlington in hopes of breaking the area's railroad connections. Meeting resistance, they fell back. The failure irked Sherman, who called for a heavier force to finish the job. "[T]he food supplies in that section should be exhausted," he wrote Major General Quincy A. Gillmore. "I don't feel disposed to feel overgenerous. . . . Those cars and locomotives should be destroyed if to do it costs you 500 men." Gillmore obliged, ordering Potter with 2,500 men, including detachments from the 32d and 102d U.S. Colored Troops, to move inland from Georgetown and "make all the display possible."Although hampered somewhat by Confederate guerrillas and slowed by supply difficulties, Potter encountered little to stop him. He raided as far as Sumter District before news of Sherman's armistice with Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston brought a cease-fire that eventually resulted in Confederate surrender. By then, Potter reported the destruction of trestles, lines, rolling stock, and 51,000 bales of cotton. When Potter returned to his base on the coast, according to one authority, five thousand newly liberated slaves followed him.Thigpen, Allan D., ed. The Illustrated Recollections of Potter's Raid, April 5-21, 1865. Sumter, S.C.: Gamecock City Printing, 1998.
Reminiscences, 1886-1909, given by Reverend William Wynn Mood, Mary McKagen Clark, Ruth McLaurin, Octavia Harby Moses, and Rebecca H. Moise detailing their experiences during the raid led by General Edward Elmer Potter (1823-1889) through Sumter District, South Carolina in 1865.
This is a chronicle of South Carolina describing in human terms 475 years of recorded history in the Palmetto State. Recounting the period from the first Spanish exploration to the end of the Civil War, the author charts South Carolina's rising national and international importance.
The South Carolina Historical Marker Program, established in 1936, has approved the installation of more than 1,700 interpretive plaques, each highlighting how places both grand and unassuming have played important roles in the history of the Palmetto State. These roadside markers identify and interpret places valuable for understanding South Carolina's past, including sites of consequential events and buildings, structures, or other resources significant for their design or their association with institutions or individuals prominent in local, state, or national history. This volume includes a concise history of the South Carolina Historical Marker Program and an overview of the marker application process. For those interested in specific historic periods or themes, the volume features condensed lists of markers associated with broader topics such as the American Revolution, African American history, women's history, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. While the program is administered by the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, most markers are proposed by local organizations that serve as a marker's official sponsor, paying its cost and assuming responsibility for its upkeep. In that sense, this inventory is a record not just of places and subjects that the state has deemed worthy of acknowledgment, but of those that South Carolinians themselves have worked to enshrine.
Stephen Atkins Swails is a forgotten American hero. A free Black in the North before the Civil War began, Swails exhibited such exemplary service in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry that he became the first African American commissioned as a combat officer in the United States military. After the war, Swails remained in South Carolina, where he held important positions in the Freedmen’s Bureau, helped draft a progressive state constitution, served in the state senate, and secured legislation benefiting newly liberated Black citizens. Swails remained active in South Carolina politics after Reconstruction until violent Redeemers drove him from the state. After Swails died in 1900, state and local leaders erased him from the historical narrative. Gordon C. Rhea’s biography, one of only a handful for any of the nearly 200,000 African Americans who fought in the Civil War or figured prominently in Reconstruction, restores Swails’s remarkable legacy. Swails’s life story is a saga of an indomitable human being who confronted deep-seated racial prejudice in various institutions but nevertheless reached significant milestones in the fight for racial equality, especially within the military. His is an inspiring story that is especially timely today.
Discover the true accounts of South Carolinian's as they recount General Sherman's march through the Palmetto State during the Civil War. During the fateful winter and spring of 1865, thousands of civilians in South Carolina, young and old, black and white, felt the impact of what General William T. Sherman called "the hard hand of war." This book tells their stories, many of which were corroborated by the testimony of Sherman's own soldiers and officers, and other eyewitnesses. These historical narratives are taken from letters and diaries of the time, as well as newspaper accounts and memoirs. The author has drawn on the superb resources of the South Carolina Historical Society's collection of manuscripts and publications to present these true, compelling stories of South Carolinians.
