Sherman's March Through South Carolina 1865: The Edisto Line

Sherman’s army crossed the South Edisto River at Binnaker’s Bridge on pontoons on February 9, 1865, and took Orangeburg on the North Edisto two or three days later; sources give February 11 and February 12. The Confederate commander in Charleston, William J. Hardee, began pulling his garrison out on the night of February 17, and Union troops walked into the city the next morning. Dorchester County did not exist yet. Its land lay between those two events, along the railroad Sherman was wrecking and the swamps Hardee was watching, and the war passed through it without a battle.

Where was Sherman going?

Not Charleston. Sherman left Savannah at the start of January 1865 with about 60,000 veterans and aimed for Columbia, then North Carolina. He had told the Navy he might swing toward Charleston if the mud slowed him enough, and on February 7 he ordered General Foster to move Hatch’s troops inland up the Edisto to Jacksonboro and Willstown and to lay in supplies at Bull’s Bay in case he had to. He did not have to.

Howard’s right wing, the Army of the Tennessee, forced the Salkehatchie line at Rivers Bridge on February 2 and 3 against about 1,200 Confederates under Lafayette McLaws, who fell back toward Branchville. By February 7 Howard was at Blackville on the South Carolina Railroad, the Charleston–Augusta line, and spent two days tearing up track east toward Bamberg, about thirty miles of it, stopping fifteen miles short of Branchville. Hardee reported from Charleston that from the day the railroad was cut to the day he gave up the city was twelve days, and every man he had was on the lines.

Binnaker’s Bridge and Orangeburg

On February 9 Howard’s wing set out from Blackville for Orangeburg. There was skirmishing at Binnaker’s Bridge and Holman’s Bridge on the South Edisto that day, and Blair’s Seventeenth Corps went over at Binnaker’s on pontoons; a Frank Leslie engraving records the crossing by name and date. That crossing is upstream of where the forks join; the single river they make below the junction is the one that became Dorchester County’s western line in 1897.

Two days later the right wing was at the North Edisto. The South Carolina Encyclopedia captions a wartime view of Orangeburg as “captured by Sherman’s right wing, Feb. 11.” A day-by-day chronology puts the skirmishes on the North Edisto and the occupation of the town on February 12. The small Confederate force in Orangeburg left at the last minute. Columbia fell on February 17 and most of it burned that night.

Farther west, a captain in the 86th Illinois recorded on February 12 that Michigan engineers had destroyed nearly every house in Williston and several miles of railroad on either side.

What was Hardee watching from Charleston?

The swamp. On February 15 Hardee wired McLaws, who was covering the railroad toward Branchville: “Our safety depends on your giving me prompt information of any movement of the enemy,” and asked to be told of any move toward Four Hole Swamp from Branchville or Orangeburg. He told McLaws to send an engine up the railroad if he had to. Four Holes Swamp runs across the middle of present Dorchester County, between where Sherman was and where Hardee sat.

Hardee did not wait to find out. His garrison marched out on the night of February 17 toward Cheraw, after setting fire to the ironclads Palmetto State, Chicora, and Charleston. On the morning of February 18 Union troops raised the flag at Sumter and Moultrie, Brigadier General Alexander Schimmelfennig took the city’s surrender.

Hatch and Potter on the coast

While Sherman crossed the Edisto upriver, the Union coastal forces under John P. Hatch and Edward E. Potter closed in from below. The 54th Massachusetts regimental history tracks it: Combahee Ferry on February 16, Ashepoo on the 17th, the South Edisto on the 19th and 20th, where the brigade stalled at the river about thirty miles from Charleston until the burnt bridges could be repaired, then Adams Run on the 21st. On February 22 the division advanced “through woods, burning property by order,” while Potter, who had landed at Bull’s Bay and come through Mount Pleasant, followed Hardee’s track toward St. Stephen’s depot. Hardee had burned the Santee bridge behind him. Potter turned back. The Union column reached the Ashley on February 23 and could not cross; those bridges were burned too.

Did Union troops burn St. George or Summerville? Nothing in the sources opened for this page says so. St. George was a railroad stop called George’s Station then, and the records do not mention it. Summerville was spared major fighting, by the account of the local historian Ed West: it was a hospital town, with two large hospitals, one a tent encampment on Red Hill, and a stopping place for refugees, about thirty of whom signed on at the Paradise Hotel as vivandières, women who followed units and sold them supplies.

The town’s one recorded fight came in March 1865, after the surrender of Charleston. Riders, probably from Union regiments in the city, came into Summerville, and the townspeople thought they meant to loot it. Councilmen armed themselves and met the riders on the steps of the town hall. One rider was shot. The council then had to convince the Union commander in Charleston that the shooting was self-defense, because they feared he would send troops to burn the village. He did not.

The railroad’s part in it

The South Carolina Railroad, the Charleston–Hamburg line, ran straight through the future county, Summerville to Ridgeville to George’s Station, and on to Branchville, where it split for Augusta and Columbia. It was the reason Sherman came north the way he did and the reason Hardee could not hold Charleston once it was cut. The road started 1865 with 62 locomotives and ended the war with 44; eighteen were destroyed by Union forces at various points in the state that year.

The track was relaid. The towns along it incorporated, St. George in 1875, and in 1897 the state cut Dorchester County out of Colleton with St. George as its seat.

The county has never had a Civil War battle to put on a sign. It has a river that was crossed and a swamp that was watched, and it has kept both.

The dispatches on this site run along the same railroad. The county history page sets 1865 against 1697 and 1886, and the county map marks the crossings. See also /history/, /map/, and /the-edisto-keeps-its-own/.

The Civil War Comes to the Edisto, February 1865