IN THE BATTLE OF SECESSIONVILLE. BY R. DE T. LAWRENCE, MARIETTA, GA.
A news item recalling the fact that June 16, 1922, was the sixtiethanniversary of the battle of Secessionville, S. C., stirred my recollection of that brillaint Confederate victory which saved Charleton from capture by the Federal forces; and now, following the account of that battle in the Veteran for October, I will give the view of a private of the Eutaw Battalion.
To give an account of a battle there are two views: One from the standpoint of the man who sees the fight from a distance, and before whom the whole lies like a panorama; and the other from that of the private actually engaged at close quarters in the struggle. A description of this battle as viewed by the former was not recognized as the one in which, as a private, I had been engaged. The account here given is by one whose duty it was to obey, and who saw only what was before him.
Leaving the Senior Class in the South Carolina College, I arranged with two of my classmates to join them in a company in Virginia, but upon going to my home at Marietta, Ga., my mother persuaded me to rejoin the company with which I had served during a vacation, for several of the students spent the vacation previous to our permanent enlistment with some command in the field. My good friend, Iredell Jones (afterwards captain), for example, was badly wounded in the leg at the first battle of Manassas, returning to college in the fall on crutches. Whether my mother thought it safer to return to the Washington Light Infantry, I do not know. Both of the men whom I was to join in Virginia were killed within sixty days after we parted, and yet neither of them could have been in a position of greater danger than that in which I was placed a short time after.
Stationed on James Island, in Company B, Washington Light Infantry, Eutaw Battalion, afterwards the 25th South Carolina Volunteers, we were awakened at daybreak on June 16, 1862, with orders to go at double quick to the front, as the enemy was advancing to an attack. Our pickets had been captured, so the notice we had was the presence of the enemy, with the result that they had gained possession of a 'piece of wood which it had been planned for us to occupy. 'These woods were of Jow underbrush, too thick for us to see into them, and First Lieutenant Blum, in command of the company (killed afterwards at Battery Wagner on Morris Island), ordered us not to shoot, as it had been reported to him that our men were in the woods, though Minie balls were flying around us. Through an opening in the woods, we could see that they were bluecoats and not our men, and on our begging him to let us shoot he gave the order for us to fire, which we were very prompt to obey. The fight could not have lasted very long when the enemy retreated. Owing to the density of the underbrush, one brave fellow came to the edge of the woods in advance of his company, and was shot down by one of our men. After the fight, I asked a badly wounded Federal soldier, who said he was from Wisconsin, and to whom I gave some water from my canteen, why he had come all the way South to fight us, when he knew we were not going to invade his State to attack him, but only asked to be let alone. His reply was that he had been fooled into enlisting and sent South.
The battle over, I found myself with the man immediately on my lcft dead, the map on my right wounded, the second man on my riyht killed, as was alsc the secona lieutenant just behind me. My life was spared through wvat | after-
wards claimed was the correct definition of a miracle—the concurrence of two events at a critical moment. At the instant my Enfield rifle was in position for a shot, a Minie ball passed over it and was deflected from its course; otherwise, I must have been wounded, if not killed. The right side of my jacket was torn, and later, on Morris Island, a fragment of a shell made a rent on the left side. I must have presented a dilapidated appearance, as my comrades advised me to get another jacket, which I did as soon as I could.
The young man (Saltus) killed on my left was a very pious and exemplary young man. When, in discussing the war, some of us, myself included, said we would feel disgraced should the war end and we had not been in a battle, he, on the other hand, said that he would be content to be at all times ready to do his duty without the necessity of shooting anyone or running the risk of being killed. Not an evening passed without his reading a chapter in the New Testament, and kneeling in prayer, a credit to the Church with which he was affiliated, whatever the denomination. He was the first man killed, dying instantly. '' Whom the gods love die young."
While the Eutaw Battalion and a squad of artillery on our left were thus engaged, the real battle was fought and won by the men in the fort, or battery (an embankment across a tongue of land at its narrowest part), bravely assisted by some troops on the side of the battery opposite to where I was. As it seems preparation for the fight had been made only the night before the attack, the few men in the battery would have had to give up from sheer exhaustion, having become worn out after working all night, throwing up the embankment and putting in place half of the gunson hand (two of which did the most effective service), had they not been reénforced by three companies during the battle. With practically two cannon on the parapet, the canister made lanes in the ranks of the foe, who became disorganized, for the tongue of land became narrower as they advanced; while at the battery itself it was a hand-to-hand fight, with one dead left on the parapet, several dead and wounded lying at the foot of the embankment, and one man killed inside the battery. The loss on each side was in proportion to the number engaged. Our loss in killed and wounded, 150; the enemy's loss in killed, wounded, and prisoners not less than 800.
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.
Not again did the enemy attempt the capture of Charleston by land. They soon after withdrew from James Island. The decisive battle of Secessionville ended the campaign.
They were afterwards repulsed with largely disproportionate _
loss at Battery Wagner on Morris Island, and all attacks by the fleet were driven off, largely through our Signal Corps intercepting messages between the fleet and land forces on Morris Island, and thus informing our officers in advance of the plans of the enemy. Charleston, of all Southern cities, was the one that the Federals desired to capture and burn, and yet they never entered it until Sherman's march to Columbia, S. C., compelled us to evacuate it, at which time the war was recognized as practically over. A writer in the London Strand called attention to the fact (shown in a picture taken soon after the war of the sea face of Fort Sumter) that its 'obstinate' defenders, burrowing under the débris of brick of which the fort was built, were actually protected by the mass of iron hurled against it by the enemy.