My Talk at the 129th Annual Reunion of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Charleston, South Carolina, July 16, 2024
[Publisher’s Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. – My camp, Secession Camp 4, hosted the SCV Annual Reunion in July and I was honored to speak at a fine dinner on the first night. Below, is the text I spoke from, which was originally printed in 16 point type. All 39 endnotes are included below, though were not mentioned in the talk. I had capitalized certain words throughout for speaking emphasis and left them capitalized. The United Confederate Veterans had held their Ninth Reunion in Charleston May 10-13, 1899, and our July 16-20, 2024 SCV Reunion was its proud descendant.]
Good evening and WELCOME to God’s Holy City of Charleston, South Carolina, where the Ashley and Cooper Rivers come together to FORM the Atlantic Ocean!
It’s also where the FIRST Ordinance of Secession passed 169 – 0 on December 20, 1860, and where our great War for Southern Independence started a few weeks later, on April 12, 1861!
My name is Gene Kizer, Jr. of Charleston Athenaeum Press, member of Secession Camp No. 4, author of several books including: Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States, The Irrefutable Argument.
It’s AN HONOR to talk to you this evening about one of the most important battles of the War Between the States, the Battle of Secessionville.
First, let me say that you could not be in a more enchanting place than right here in Charleston! Last week Travel + Leisure magazine announced the results of their annual survey and they awarded Charleston the TOP DESTINATION to visit in our entire country for the 12th consecutive year.
Here is what the Post and Courier wrote July 10th:
Charleston . . . edged out Santa Fe, N.M., for the top U.S. spot, with the ‘unbeatable’ dining scene mentioned as a key factor. . . . [also] sights, landmarks, culture, cuisine, friendliness, shopping and overall value. . . . One reader said Charleston could ‘compete with any European capital for its arts, entertainment, active lifestyle and food.’ Charleston was also the only place in the United States “named among the 25 best cities in the world.”
So plan on enjoying every second of your visit to the city that Lord Proprietor Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, called his “Little Darling!”
There are some folks here from the organization Defend Arlington who, along with the SCV, fought HARD this past year-and-a-half to keep the Confederate Reconciliation Monument in Arlington National Cemetery. The monument was removed late last December in the most DISHONORABLE, DISGRACEFUL ACT in American history.
Its removal has DEFILED the graves of 518 Confederate soldiers and family that are arranged in concentric circles out from the former monument and it has DESECRATED Arlington National Cemetery itself.
Those Confederate graves were invited into Arlington National Cemetery by President William McKinley, a former Union soldier, as part of the reconciliation of our country after the War Between the States. Their placement in Arlington was approved by Congress, and several contemporary presidents participated in the establishment of the Confederate Reconciliation Memorial.
A century of other presidents sent annual memorial wreaths including Barack Obama.
Veterans, North and South, spoke at its dedication.
The removal of the Confederate Monument has added greatly to our military recruiting crisis since traditionally, 44% of the United States military is recruited in the South where Confederate ancestors and military service are revered.
Of course the American military is inspired by examples of valor, especially when it comes from the blood of ancestors, which is the SAME blood coursing through OUR veins.
Men like Audie Murphy of Texas, the most highly decorated American soldier of World War II, whose grandfather was a Confederate soldier.
I could go on all day with examples like Nathan Bedford Forrest, III, who joined the United States Army Air Force in World War II and rose to the rank of Brigadier-General. He was killed in action over the North Sea after a bombing raid in Germany in September, 1943.
In the War Between the States, there was no greater valor in the history of the world than that displayed by Confederate soldiers. Historian James McPherson writes in his book, Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam:
[T]he overall mortality rate for the South exceeded that of any country in World War I and that of all but the region between the Rhine and the Volga in World War II.[i]
I want to read that again:
[T]he overall mortality rate for the South exceeded that of any country in World War I and that of all but the region between the Rhine and the Volga in World War II.[ii]
Think about that.
The presidents supporting the Confederate Monument started with McKinley who, right after the Spanish American War set the stage: (QUOTE)
. . . every soldier’s grave made during our unfortunate civil war is a tribute to American valor . . . And the time has now come . . . when in the spirit of fraternity we should share in the care of the graves of the Confederate soldiers . . . The cordial feeling now happily existing between the North and South prompts this gracious act and if it needed further justification it is found in the gallant loyalty to the Union and the flag so conspicuously shown this past year by the sons and grandsons of those heroic dead.
President William Howard Taft spoke and was warmly received at the UDC ceremony the evening the cornerstone was laid.
President Woodrow Wilson gave the dedication address June 4, 1914.[iii]
President Theodore Roosevelt sent the first memorial wreath that started an annual tradition.
President Warren G. Harding sent a long message of condolence that was read at the funeral of the monument’s acclaimed Jewish sculptor, Moses Ezekiel, who was a VMI Confederate soldier. Here is an excerpt published Wednesday, March 30, 1921:
Every line and curve and expression carries the plea for a truly united nation that may be equal to the burdens of these exacting times. It speaks to us the ardent wish, the untiring purpose, to help make our people one people, secure in independence, dedicated to freedom . . . Its long-drawn shadows of earliest morn and latest evening will always fall on sacred soil. . . .
That soil is not sacred today.
It has been desecrated by hypocrite Elizabeth Warren, fake Indian from Massachusetts, whose Boston, in 1862, DURING the War Between the States, was the SLAVE TRADING CAPITAL of the earth along with New York according to W. E. B. Du Bois.
New England had been slave trading just about the entire existence of the country. Much of the infrastructure of Old New England was built by profits from the slave trade.
In 1862, when Du Bois wrote about it, Boston and New York had been slave trading ILLEGALLY for 54 years since the slave trade was outlawed by the U.S. Constitution in 1808.
But in 1862, Boston and New York were the slave trading capitals of the earth.
We can not allow Arlington National Cemetery to remain desecrated. The Confederate Reconciliation Memorial must be restored.
It is clear that Elizabeth Warren, Ty Seidule of the naming commission who submitted a historically fraudulent report on the Confederate Memorial, have hurt military recruiting.
Go by and talk to Defend Arlington in the vendor’s area and join the fight. They have some great items including commemorative coins and medals. I’m wearing one here that says Deo Vindice, the Latin phrase on the Great Seal of the Confederacy.
The Battle of Secessionville took place exactly 162 years and one month ago today, on June 16, 1862.
It is one of the most important battles in the War Between the States. It kept the Yankees out of Charleston in mid-1862 and, had Charleston fallen then, it unquestionably would have changed the course of the war and of American history.
The battle site at Fort Lamar Heritage Preserve on James Island, which is on the way to Folly Beach, is well preserved though somewhat grown up. You can still walk all around it and see the front parapet of the earthen battery where bloody hand-to-hand combat took place.
It is the second most historic site in South Carolina, second only to Fort Sumter. You can do a Google search and pull up directions. Your GPS will get you there.
Brigadier General Johnson Hagood, in charge of Confederate Advanced Forces in the battle as a colonel, wrote after the war that the Battle of Secessionville was “one of the DECISIVE engagements of the war.”[iv]
The battle covered Charleston in GLORY for all time because it was one of the most savagely fought battles despite smaller numbers of troops engaged. A Confederate soldier IN the battle, R. deTreville Lawrence of Marietta, Georgia wrote in Confederate Veteran magazine:
Many years after, I met at the Confederate Home of Georgia, a Mr. Jordan, who had been in the engagement in the battery, and subsequently in a number of battles in Virginia, and he told me that the one at Secessionville was the closest and hardest fought of any.[v]
Many of the defenders were native Charlestonians. The prize being fought over – magnificent Charleston – which the North hated and wanted to conquer as bad as Richmond, made the stakes astronomical.
Charleston was important to both sides as a symbol, since both secession and the war had started here, but it was also a critical Confederate port for shipping cotton and importing arms, and it was a vital railroad connection to the rest of the South.
Charleston was NOT CONQUERED in the War Between the States, despite the South being outnumbered four to one and massively outgunned.
The brand new Confederate States of America was up against what distinguished historian Paul Kennedy said was “an economic giant” and what became QUOTE “the greatest military nation on earth before its post-1865 demobilization.”[vi]
But there was NO military surrender in Charleston.
In February 1865, Confederate authorities ordered Charleston’s defenders to evacuate the UNCONQUERED city and head off to other battlefields to continue the war. Charleston was turned over to the Union Army by a city alderman.[vii]
B. A. O. Norris of Graham Texas, a member of the Confederate 1st South Carolina Regiment who was in action in Charleston, said in Confederate Veteran magazine after the war:
I think I am right when I state that this was the only place besieged that DID NOT YIELD to the forces besieging it. It was stronger and abler to repel any attack on the day that it was evacuated than ever before.[viii]
Some 750,000 died and over a million were maimed in the War Between the States. The industrial North with its enormous shipping and manufacturing capability had unlimited resources.[ix] There were dozens of marine engine factories in the North, ZERO in the South. Toward the end, Gen. Robert E. Lee’s sick, emaciated horses could barely pull the artillery, so, OFTEN, he was not able to factor it into battle plans.
Confederate cavalry horses were fed on ONE-TENTH what Yankee horses were fed,[x] and Confederate soldiers were often hungry and ragged while the Union Army, of which 25% was FOREIGN BORN, was always well fed, well clothed and well armed.
The South, with 100% control of King Cotton, threatened the North’s economic domination. Secession meant no more Southern tariff money for Northern industry, but more importantly, it meant that that same money would now be turned inward on the South to grow its own industries. Southerners were as driven to succeed and make money as Northerners but the enormous success of Southern agriculture kept the focus on that, and not industrializing, until the late antebellum period. Per capita income in the South and North was roughly equal.
Southerners had long been supplying the federal treasury with most of its revenue. Cotton alone, in 1860, was 62% of American exports and that was before adding in other Southern commodities. The world’s economy in 1860 was plantation based and agricultural. Southerners were producing the wealth of the country yet three-fourths of the federal treasury was being spent in the North. The most prominent national economist in 1860 was Thomas Prentice Kettell. He proves that the South was producing the wealth of the country in his famous book, Southern Wealth and Northern Profits.[xi]
Without the North, the South had a shining future able to buy better, lower-priced, non-tariffed goods from Europe and to start manufacturing for itself.
Southerners believed in free trade, and established in the Confederate Constitution a low tariff for the operation of a small federal government in a States Rights nation.
They also made protective tariffs UNCONSTITUTIONAL, and they prohibited spending money out of the federal treasury for internal improvements in individual states.
Confederates believed if a state wanted to spend money, good, spend it yourself. Same with slavery. It was not required and Southerners encouraged free states to join the Confederacy.
That petrified Lincoln, of course.
Without the South, the North was dead.
It would lose its manufacturing and shipping markets overnight. Great Britain was the greatest manufacturing country on earth in the antebellum era, not the North. The North grew to great wealth and power manufacturing mostly for the South and shipping Southern agricultural products.
Southerners had great warm water ports and the Mississippi. They had a great trade relationship with Great Britain. They did not need the North and were sick of New England hatred and hypocrisy, just like we, today, are sick of fake Indian Elizabeth Warren’s hatred and hypocrisy.
The South was an integrated, bi-racial society. It was in the South’s best interest to end slavery with good will and help for newly freed slaves.
Most blacks knew that they were HATED in the North. Several Northern and Western states had laws prohibiting blacks from even visiting, much less living there, including Lincoln’s Illinois.
Alexis de Tocqueville made it clear in Democracy in America that despite slavery, race relations were better in the South than anywhere in the country. He said they were WORST in New England.
It was not ending slavery that caused the war, but the North’s desire for economic domination of our country with all the Western lands and markets WAITING to be conquered and exploited. Lincoln and Northern leaders knew of their enormous advantages at that point in history, not just their population and pipeline of poor immigrants from Europe to serve in their armies, but their ability to manufacture rifles, cannons, ammunition, uniforms, saddles, ships, etc.
Paul Kennedy writes:
In 1860 the North possessed 110,000 manufacturing establishments to the South’s 18,000; the Confederacy produced only 36,700 tons of pig iron, whereas Pennsylvania’s total alone was 580,000 tons; New York State manufactured almost $300 million worth of goods–well over four times the production of Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi combined. This staggering disparity in the economic base of each belligerent steadily transformed itself into real military effectiveness.[xii]
Lincoln was a man 40 feet tall armed to the teeth with modern weaponry facing a man five feet tall carrying a musket.
Of course Lincoln was going to goad the South into a fight so he could use his enormous advantages. That why he did not remove his troops from Fort Sumter in Charleston, and Fort Pickens near Pensacola, Florida.
By April, 1861, with the Confederacy getting stronger every day and the Union facing massive economic problems, Lincoln sent five military missions into the South to get the war started.[xiii]
He had lied to Confederates for months and misled his own commander in Fort Sumter, Major Robert Anderson, implying that he was soon going to remove the fort’s garrison and disarm the explosive situation in the country.
When Anderson was informed by letter dated April 4, 1861 from Secretary of War Simon Cameron that he would be resupplied and possibly reinforced, he knew immediately what that meant.
He wrote back to Cameron and said he had been strongly assured that Fort Sumter would be evacuated and QUOTE “a movement made now, when the South has been erroneously informed that none such will be attempted, would produce most disastrous results throughout our country.”
Anderson ended with:
We shall strive to do our duty, though I frankly say that my heart is not in the war which I see is to be thus commenced.[xiv]
Anderson SEES that the war is to be THUS COMMENCED by Abraham Lincoln.
Several Northern newspapers agreed with Anderson including the Providence (R.I.) Daily Post that wrote the day after the commencement of the bombardment of Fort Sumter: “We are to have civil war . . . because Abraham Lincoln loves a party better than he loves his country. . . . Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity to INAUGURATE CIVIL WAR without appearing in the character of an aggressor.”[xv]
The directives to defend Charleston were clear.
Gen. Lee summed it all up when he wrote in early 1862 to Maj. Gen. John C. Pemberton, then in command of the area, and said that the city is QUOTE “to be fought street by street and house by house as long as we have a foot of ground to stand upon.”[xvi]
Both sides realized that James Island was the key to taking Charleston so by 1862, Confederates had tightened their lines. They evacuated the area around Stono Inlet and the mouth of the Stono River except for pickets, and built a battery near the little community of Secessionville, approximately two miles further inland.
The Secessionville community was so named, not because of anything to do with secession from the Union, but, as legend has it, because a group of younger planters seceded from the older planters and built summer homes there.
John Johnson in his great book The Defense of Charleston Harbor, writes that the battery on the Secessionville peninsula was Col. L. M. Hatch’s idea “who also constructed it with the labor of his regiment of Rifles.”[xvii]
It was strategically chosen because little Secessionville is at the seaward end of a peninsula shaped like an oblong hourglass and flanked by saltwater pluff mud creeks. Hatch chose the narrowest part of the hourglass, which was only 125 yards across, for his battery. A 75 foot observation tower was built, so the battery became known as Tower Battery.
Most of James Island was cleared for agriculture so an observer could climb the tower with field glasses and see all over the entire area including the mouth of the Stono River.
Confederates built a defensive line of batteries across James Island from Battery Pringle on the Stono River to Tower Battery.
Further up the Stono near Wappoo Cut in today’s Riverland Terrace, was powerful Fort Pemberton.
Tower Battery was a mile in advance of the main Confederate line.
A FOOTBRIDGE was constructed perhaps a mile across the marsh to connect the main Confederate line with Secessionville. The footbridge was capable of men and horses and was far enough back that it was protected from Yankee shelling, though they tried to hit it during the battle. Confederate reinforcements stepping off the footbridge had a straight sprint 600 yards into the back of Tower Battery.
This was a brilliant bit of planning that won the battle for the South. Badly outnumbered Confederates received JUST enough reinforcements across the footbridge in JUST the nick of time to turn the tide of the battle.
When the battle began, it was 6,600 Yankees against 300 Confederates later reinforced to a grand total of 750, yet the Yankees were soundly beaten by those 750 Confederates and suffered 683 casualties compared to 204 Confederate.[xviii]
The priest-cap design of the front of the fort was two redans, side by side, so together they looked like the letter “M.” Imagine a giant M in front of you then push it forward onto the ground. That’s what the front of the fort looked like. It was as high as 16 feet in some places with a ditch fronting the walls. That design forced attackers into the center of the M so defenders could shoot an enfilading fire on them from both sides.
Two other two-gun batteries were positioned a mile away to enfilade the approach to Tower Battery. The two batteries were extremely effective in the battle enfilading attackers in the front of the fort and later pouring fire into the Third New Hampshire after it took up a position across Simpson’s Creek.[xix]
The ground was already difficult for attacking troops because it was farmland and had furrows every foot or so.
The approach to the fort narrowed steadily as it got closer to Tower Battery, which would slow an attacker’s advance and make it hard to maneuver. Confederates had also felled trees and used abattis, and dug a huge ditch across the front approach so that attacking troops would be bunched together and perfect targets for grapeshot and canister.
Another big part of Charleston’s defenses was the Charleston and Savannah Railroad. It’s tracks ran along today’s West Ashley Greenway, which is a long linear park for running and walking. Confederates never had enough men so whichever city needed men, the other was to send them on the Charleston and Savannah Railroad.
A hundred miles of track had to be defended the entire war and it WAS despite being attacked constantly by Union troops including the day before the battle. Robert E. Lee himself had designed much of its defenses.
Tower Battery was armed with one 8″ Columbiad in the center flanked by two 24 pound rifled cannons. On each side of the fort were two 18 pounders. There was one mortar, which was further back. A magazine, bomb proof and rifle pits were in that area too.
From early on, Tower Battery shelled everything that moved at the mouth of the Stono River. No question that this constant shelling gave the artillerists great skill with their guns.
The Yankees landed June 2nd and tried to set up a secure camp at the mouth of the Stono but between mosquitoes and Confederate fire, could not do it. They knew they had to destroy Tower Battery or leave the area.
The Battle of Secessionville took place Monday, June 16, 1862 before dawn on a dark, drizzly morning. The earthen fort was not finished despite feverish activity around the clock and between artillery barrages.
Sunrise was 5:14 a.m. but three hours before that, at 2 a.m., 3,500 Union troops formed the first of two columns, and 3,100 formed the second. Attackers were to “advance in silence and make the attack at ‘first light’ with the bayonet.”[xx]
There were around 300 Confederates in the fort at the time. Col. Thomas G. Lamar was in command and had pushed his men to exhaustion. He had allowed them to sleep at 3 a.m., but not for long.
Four Confederate pickets at the Rivers House were surprised and captured around 4 a.m. by the Yankee Forlorn Hope companies but not before getting a handful of shots off and drawing Yankee blood.
Other winded Confederate pickets made it and alerted Tower Battery.
Sgt. James M. Baggett fired a 24 pounder and a split second later Col. Lamar fired the Columbiad. The roar of the guns sprung the garrison to life as grape tore into the oncoming Yankees a hundred yards away.
This was 4:30 a.m., 45 minutes before sunrise, and the Battle of Secessionville was ON.[xxi]
A number of Yankees reached the parapet and fought hand-to-hand with Confederate defenders despite a “devastating fire from the thoroughly aroused garrison . . . of grape, cannister, chain, nails, and broken glass.”
Milby Burton writes in The Siege of Charleston:
The Eighth Michigan fell back and re-formed; around 5:10 with the aid of the Second Brigade they charged under fire for 1000 yards, assaulted the works, and again gained a foothold. After more fierce hand-to-hand fighting, they were again pushed back.[xxii]
The Yankee perspective tells us the most about the devastating effectiveness of the Southerners. Confederate Major-General Samuel Jones in his 1911 book The Siege of Charleston, writes:
While the regiments of the leading brigade were forming forward into line in double-quick time a storm of grape and canister from the Confederate guns crashed through the center of the line and continued tearing through the ranks with great rapidity, severing the line, . . .[xxiii]
Union Lt. Col. Frank Graves writes:
Still the regiment moved rapidly on, preserving their order and leaving the ground in their rear strewn with their dead and wounded, and did not stop until they gained the parapet and delivered their fire upon the enemy in his works.[xxiv]
In brutal hand-to-hand fighting, Confederates drove them from the parapet. They withdrew “and, being unsupported for a considerable time, they fell back slowly, contesting every inch of ground” while under fire. They scattered after losing many officers.[xxv]
The Yankee regiments became tangled up with each other then:
“When within two or three hundred yards of the Confederate works the Seventh Connecticut ‘came obliquely upon an unforeseen ditch and morass,’ crowding and doubling up the regiment toward the center. At this moment a terrific fire of grape and musketry swept through the ranks. ‘The line was inevitably broken,’ . . .”[xxvi]
The Twenty-eighth Massachusetts advanced but the regiment in front of it fell back and threw it into confusion. The way was also blocked by a fallen tree and “an impassable marsh . . . and abattis of dense brush . . .”.[xxvii]
At the same time, “the Seventy-ninth Highlanders, leading the Second Brigade, was ordered to the right to assail the work.” It was led by Lt. Col. David Morrison who writes that, as he gained the parapet:
I received a wound in the head, which, though slight, stunned me for the time being; but still I was able to retain command. With me many mounted the works, but only to fall or to receive their wounds from the enemy, posted in rifle-pits in rear of the fort. . . . From the ramparts I had a full view of their works. They were entrenched in a position well selected for defensive purposes and upon which our artillery seemed to have little effect, save driving them into their retreats, and in attempting to dislodge them we were met with a fierce and determined opposition, but with equal if not superior determination and courage were they met by our forces, and had I been supported could have carried their works, . . . for we virtually had it in our possession.[xxviii]
Morrison was ordered to fall back and said he QUOTE “did in good order, leaving behind about forty killed or badly wounded, many of whom fell on the ramparts. I brought back with me six killed and about sixty wounded.”
Union Col. Daniel Leasure, Brigade Commander, rushed forward with his staff to lead another assault. They got to within three hundred yards of the Confederate works when:
We entered the range of a perfect storm of grape, canister, nails, broken glass, and pieces of chains, fired from three very large pieces on the fort, which completely swept every foot of ground within the range, and either cut the men down or drove them to the shelter of the ravine on the left. I now turned to look after and lead up the One Hundredth Pennsylvania Regiment and found its center just entering the fatal line of fire, which completely cut it in two . . . [xxix]
He adds that the Eighth Michigan, which had led the attack, had been decimated “by the murderous fire through which we all had to pass.”[xxx]
They were also hit by friendly fire from their own artillery and gunboats.
The Third New Hampshire and Third Rhode Island were across what was then known as Simpson’s Creek, on the right hand side of the Confederate defenders on the parapet. Those two Yankee units had advanced so far forward that they were behind the fort and started pouring fire into the back of the fort causing the Confederate artillerists on the parapet to abandon their guns and pick up their rifles. This was around 5:25 a.m.
Union Colonel John H. Jackson, regiment commander, wrote that “he found no artillery on that part of the Confederates works” and could have easily gone into the fort:
If . . . I could have crossed a stream between me and the earthworks about twenty yards in width, with apparently four or five feet of water, and the mud very soft; the men therefore could not cross. The enemy soon opened on me from a battery about two hundred yards in our rear, throwing grape into the ranks, from which we suffered severely. In a short time they opened fire with rifles and infantry. At the same time a battery about a mile north of us opened on us with shot and shell.[xxxi]
Col. Jackson apparently never heard of pluff mud but Confederate Col. L. M. Hatch who designed the fort, sure had.
Jackson saw reinforcements, the Fourth Louisiana Battalion of Colonel J. McEnery, around 260 men, advancing over the footbridge and into Secessionville then into the back of Tower Battery. Those reinforcements had given the Confederates their largest number of defenders during the battle, which was around 750. The battle had started with 300 Confederates in the fort up against 6,600 Yankees.
Here is an account by a soldier IN the Fourth Louisiana Battalion, H. J. Lea of Winnsboro, Louisiana, who had advanced across the footbridge:
I was a member of Capt. J. W. Walker’s company, which enlisted and went out from Monroe, Louisiana March 2, 1862. We went to Savannah, Ga. and there were attached to and made part of the 4th Louisiana Battalion, commanded by Col. John McEnery. . . .
At the break of day on the morning of the 16th, firing was heard up in the front of the fort, the alarm given and the long roll beat. The line was quickly formed with orders to march in double-quick time. . . . Just before the head of our line reached the fort, the Yankee regiment, having formed on the opposite side of [Simpson’s] Creek, about one hundred yards distant, opened fire on us. We were ordered to halt, face to the right, and fire. This continued but a short time; the storming party in front was crowding in and we were ordered to face to the left and rush to the fort, where the Yankees were scrambling for the top of the parapets crowding forward in great numbers with a desperate determination to capture the fort. We arrived just at the critical moment; a few minutes later would have been too late. They were repulsed, routed, and fled in the same quick time that they came, with our rifles and artillery playing on them to the extreme range.
It seemed that every man there in defense of the fort felt as though the whole responsibility of holding the fort rested on him for it would have been impossible for any force of the same size to have done more. As soon as the storming party in front gave way and fled, the flanking party across the creek also fled hurriedly, for had they remained, even for a short time, they would have been cut off and captured or killed.[xxxii]
Lea goes on in great detail outlining the gallant career of the Fourth Louisiana then he ends with:
General Lee’s army surrendered April 9, and General Johnston’s a few days later, and, other organizations rapidly following, the Confederate government merged into history. I have not been back since, but remain an unreconstructed Confederate.[xxxiii]
ME TOO, Brother Lea.
To sum it up:
It was 6,600 Yankees against 300 Confederates who were reinforced to a grand total of 750, so 750 Confederates with their guts and ingenious Col. Hatch’s fort and footbridge, defeated the Union Army’s 6,600 soldiers and the Union Navy’s armada of gunboats on the Stono River.
The Yankees had 683 casualties with 107 dead.
Confederates had 204 casualties with 52 dead, most of them the troops who defended the guns on the parapet and fought hand-to-hand with the Yankees.
Most of the Union dead were buried in a mass grave somewhere near Tower Battery.
Yankees learned their lesson and left James Island within two weeks with their commander, Brigadier General Henry W. Benham, under arrest.
As stated, Charleston was NEVER CONQUERED but stronger on the day it was evacuated than ever before.
During the battle, Col. Thomas G. Lamar was wounded in the neck and passed command to Lieutenant Colonel Peter C. Gaillard who soon was wounded in the knee. He passed command to Lt. Col. T. M. Wagner.
Wagner was killed the next year when a gun exploded at Fort Moultrie so, in his honor, an important battery on Morris Island was named Battery Wagner. It was where another Confederate victory against a much larger Yankee force took place: the battle featured in the movie Glory.
Tower Battery was renamed Fort Lamar in honor of Col. Thomas G. Lamar, Tower Battery’s commander. Today’s Fort Lamar Road cuts right through the original fort on its way to the original community of Secessionville.
Colonel Johnson Hagood, commanding the Advanced Forces, was instrumental in the victory because there were no Confederate generals directly involved. Hagood, later governor of South Carolina and for whom the football stadium of his alma mater, The Citadel, is named, wrote a report on the Battle of Secessionville June 18, 1862.[xxxiv]
Hagood received the following commendation from Brigadier-General William Duncan Smith:
Headquarters James Island,
June 22, 1862
Colonel Hagood, Commanding Advanced Line, East Division, James Island:
Colonel,–In the absence of General Evans, first in command on the 16th instant, allow me to thank you for your distinguished services on that day, and through you to thank Colonel Stevens, Colonel Simonton and the other gallant officers and men under your command, for their noble and gallant service at that time. Please make known my views to your command.
Very respectfully, sir, your obedient servant,
Wm. Duncan Smith,
Brigadier-General Commanding.[xxxv]
Warren Ripley writes in Siege Train, The Journal of a Confederate Artilleryman in the Defense of Charleston:
. . . just as the Southerners had discovered the power of the U.S. Navy at Port Royal, Fort Lamar taught the Yankees a valuable lesson – don’t tangle with the Confederate Army beyond protective range of the warships’ guns. These two principles were to color military thinking in the Charleston area for the remainder of the war.[xxxvi]
Milby Burton writes:
When the news of the repulse of the Federal forces reached Charleston, the citizens were elated, but when the casualty list arrived including the names of many Charlestonians, one commentator wrote: ‘a Gloom has been cast over our City by the death of many fine young men.‘[xxxvii]
After the battle, the Confederate Congress passed this resolution:
That the thanks of Congress are due and are hereby tendered to Colonel Thomas G. Lamar and the officers and men engaged in the gallant and successful defense of Secessionville against the greatly superior numbers of the enemy on the 16th day of June, 1862.[xxxviii]
Confederate soldier R. deTreville Lawrence also said after the battle:
The troops which had reinforced the command of General Gist on James Island were returned to their former stations on the coast and at Savannah, and the heroes of Secessionville were toasted on every hand.[xxxix]
Fort Lamar today, though battered by age, is still there in its entirety and much the way it was June 16, 1862. You will recognize the front parapet where so much hand-to-hand fighting took place, and know that behind it was the magazine, bombproof, observation tower and rifle pits where Confederates shot down Yankees that reached the parapet.
You can look down Fort Lamar Road toward the Secessionville community and imagine the 4th Louisiana advancing at double-quick across the footbridge over the marsh to Secessionville then into the back of Tower Battery in just the nick of time.
It is a beautiful and quiet place today. Go out there and walk those hallowed grounds and contemplate our magnificent Southern history then leave with an even greater determination to promote the TRUTH about it far and wide, and forever.
Thank you.
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[i] James M. McPherson, Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 3, 177 n. 56, in Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering, Death and the American Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), xii.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] The fake news Washington Post covered up the fact that President Woodrow Wilson gave the dedication address at the Confederate Memorial’s dedication, June 4, 1914. In their article “Majority of House GOP, including 3 Black Republicans, vote for failed Confederate memorial measure” by Gillian Brockell, June 14, 2024, all the Washington Post said was: “It was installed in 1914, almost 50 years after the Civil War ended, by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in a ceremony attended by President Woodrow Wilson, who was noted even at the time for his racist view.” The Washington Post is noted today for ITS racist, bigoted views in addition to its fake news as it proved by its malicious, fraudulent story against Covington Catholic High School’s Nicholas Sandmann. Sandmann sued the Washington Post and other fake news outlets like CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, the New York Times and Rolling Stone. See “Washington Post settles lawsuit with family of Kentucky teenager” by Paul Farhi, July 24, 2020.
[iv] Johnson Hagood, Memoirs of the War of Secession, U.R. Brooks, ed. (Columbia, SC, 1910), 96.
[v] R. deTreville Lawrence, Marietta, Georgia, “In the Battle of Secessionville.” Confederate Veteran, Vol. XXX, No. 11, November, 1922.
[vi] Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987), 178-182.
[vii] Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, (O.R.), LIII, 61, in E. Milby Burton, The Siege of Charleston, 1861-1865 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1970), 319. Burton also used the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies extensively.
[viii] B.A.O. Norris, Graham, Texas, “Confederate Artillery Regiments.” Confederate Veteran, Vol. XV, No. 12, Dec. 1907; Reprint: Wilmington, NC: Broadfoot Publishing Co., 1987, 1988.
[ix] Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 178-182.
[x] Charles W. Ramsdell, “General Robert E. Lee’s Horse Supply, 1862-1865” in Gene Kizer, Jr., compiler, Charles W. Ramsdell, Dean of Southern Historians (Charleston: Charleston Athenaeum Press, 2017), 250. The quotation is from the OR, ser. I, v XXIX, pt. 2, 664-665. See also the North’s overwhelming advantage with the railroads, “Railroads In The Civil War: Facts and Statistics (North vs South),” https://www.american-rails.com/civil.html, accessed 3-23-21; and Charles W. Ramsdell, “The Confederate Government and the Railroads,” in Gene Kizer, Jr., compiler, Charles W. Ramsdell, Dean of Southern Historians, 300.
[xi] Thomas Prentice Kettell, Southern Wealth and Northern Profits as Exhibited in Statistical Facts and Official Figures: Showing the Necessity of Union to the Future Prosperity and Welfare of the Republic (New York: Geo. W. & John A. Wood, 1860; Reprint: University: University of Alabama Press, 1965).
[xii] Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 180.
[xiii] Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr., It Wasn’t About Slavery, Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War (Washington, DC: Regnery History, 2020), 142. The five military missions were: 1) the Welles-Fox Expedition, heading for Charleston; 2) the Rowan Expedition, also heading for Charleston; 3) Captain Adams’ ships, lurking off Santa Rosa Island; 4) Colonel Brown’s Expedition, heading for Pensacola; and 5) Porter’s Expedition, also steaming for Pensacola.
[xiv] W. A. Swanberg, First Blood, The Story of Fort Sumter (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957), 280-282. Both Cameron’s letter of April 4, 1861 to Anderson, and Anderson’s reply to Cameron of April 8, 1861, that was intercepted by Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard in Charleston, are included.
[xv] “WHY?”, Providence (R.I.) Daily Post, April 13, 1861.
[xvi] Official Records, (O.R.), XIV, 524, in Burton, The Siege of Charleston, 98.
[xvii] John Johnson, The Defense of Charleston Harbor Including Fort Sumter and the Adjacent Islands, 1863-1865. (Charleston, S.C.: Walker, Evans & Cogswell Co., Publishers, 1890); Reprint: Germantown, Tennessee: Guild Bindery Press, 1994, Chapter 1, Note 1, 25.
[xviii] Two thousand Confederate reinforcements were to be sent but had not arrived when the battle began. John Johnson in his magisterial work, The Defense of Charleston Harbor, Including Fort Sumter and the Adjacent Island, 1863-1865., previously cited, writes: “Brigadier-General H. W. Benham . . . attacked the works at Secessionville with two divisions and a brigade (7000 men) early on the morning of June 16, 1862. The Confederates, under Colonel T. G. Lamar, Second South Carolina Artillery, were nearly surprised and worsted at the onset, but, resisting bravely and being reinforced to about 750 men, they successfully repelled four charges of the enemy, inflicting on them a disastrous repulse and a reported official loss of 683 men, the Confederate loss being 204, of which 32 were in the defense of the right by Brigadier-General Hagood.”; Johnson Hagood wrote in his Memoirs of the War of Secession, previously cited, on page 96: “The Federals, by their own showing, had 6,000 men engaged and 1,500 in reserve (part of this reserve being the Third Rhode Island). . . . There were engaged on the Confederate side, in the fort and out of it, not exceeding 1,300 men, of which 450 were with Colonel Hagood.”
[xix] Burton, The Siege of Charleston, 107.
[xx] Official Records, XIV, 524, in Burton, The Siege of Charleston, 105.
[xxi] Burton, The Siege of Charleston, 104-105.
[xxii] Burton, The Siege of Charleston, 106.
[xxiii] Jones, The Siege of Charleston, 104.
[xxiv] Ibid.
[xxv] Jones, The Siege of Charleston, 105.
[xxvi] Ibid.
[xxvii] Jones, The Siege of Charleston, 106.
[xxviii] Jones, The Siege of Charleston, 106-107.
[xxix] Jones, The Siege of Charleston, 108.
[xxx] Ibid.
[xxxi] Jones, The Siege of Charleston, 110.
[xxxii] H. J. Lea, Winnsboro, Louisiana. “The Fourth Louisiana Battalion at the Battle of Secessionville, S. C.” Confederate Veteran, Vol. XXXI, No. 1, January, 1923.
[xxxiii] Ibid.
[xxxiv] Battle of Secessionville, Report of Colonel Johnson Hagood., Headquarters Advanced Forces, James Island, June 18, 1862., in Rev. J. William Jones, D. D., Richmond, VA: Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. XII, January to December, 1884, 63-66.
[xxxv] Ibid.
[xxxvi] Warren Ripley, ed., Siege Train, The Journal of a Confederate Artilleryman in the Defense of Charleston (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press), Published for the Charleston Library Society, 1986, ix, x.
[xxxvii] Burton, The Siege of Charleston, 110.
[xxxviii] Ibid.
[xxxix] R. deTreville Lawrence, “The Battle of Secessionville,” Confederate Veteran, Vol. XXX, No. 10, October, 1922.
Excellent article.
This is what the controllers of the narrative fear.
The Louisiana Confederate Native Guard, over 1000 free, black men VOLUNTEERED to serve the Confederacy and their home State…they were ORDERED to join the union army. Truth can no longer be hidden…yankees pretend “Jim Crow” laws were a Southern invention when in 1859, Oregon was admitted to the union as a Whites-Only State…hard to be more Jim Crow than Oregon.
Keep pushing truth…nothing can stop it.