In the Footsteps of the Beaufort Artillery – Part 3

A Long March to the Last Stand of the Confederacy

Continued from Part 2

The Noose Tightens, November 1864 – February 1865

After unsuccessfully resisting the Union Naval attack upon and occupation of Beaufort, South Carolina and its surrounding islands in November 1861, The Beaufort Volunteer Artillery (BVA), including Julius Bythewood Bell and others of our Bell ancestors, gathered inland and were assigned to help protect the central section of the Charleston and Savannah (C&S) Railroad, a mission they accepted and executed successfully for over three years. Sections of the BVA were involved in numerous night raids against the occupying forces and a handful of significant battles along the railway. Among the last was the bloody repulse of Union troops, including at least two companies of African-American troops, at Honey Hill near the Grahamville depot on November 29 or 30, 1864. About thirty miles south, Gen. William T. Sherman‘s Army was drawing closer to the terminus of the C&S at Savannah, Georgia, the conclusion of their “March to the Sea.”

BVA Pvt. Charles W. Hutson remembered, “Shortly after [Honey Hill] we were put into Fort Coosawatchie to defend… the railway bridge… from gunboats coming up the river from below.”¹A Union battery on a high point across the river shelled the fortress constantly, but the BVA took out at least one of these guns. BVA Pvt C.A. DeSaussure wrote, We “knocked their 20lb Parrot off its carriage and broke up the outfit…. On Christmas Day we had a lively artillery duel for an hour or so…. Several of our men received wounds but none killed.” ²

Confederate garrison forces under Gen. William J. Hardee abandoned Savannah on December 20, 1864 for Charleston, allowing Gen. Sherman to offer the Georgia coastal city “as a Christmas gift” to President Abraham Lincoln without firing a shot. The noose was tightening, and at some point in January the BVA abandoned Fort Coosawhatchie and their long-time encampment near Pocotaligo, and moved toward Charleston, encamping for a period at Adam’s Run, on Johns Island, and on James Island.

A Long March

The Confederate strategy to divide its forces and defend both Augusta and Charleston allowed Sherman’s troops to feint in both directions as they slogged virtually unopposed through the freezing marshes and swollen rivers through the center of South Carolina from Savannah to Columbia, and thence to their main objective: The railroad junction at Goldsboro, North Carolina. The Confederates, of course, could only guess at Sherman’s intentions. When Columbia fell on February 17, 1865, holding Augusta and Charleston became moot, and the South Carolina forces found themselves in a race north to join with the remnants of the Army of Tennessee and other disparate forces somewhere in North Carolina for what would be the last stand of the Confederacy.

Pvt Hutson recalled, “During our march along the seaboard we had a great deal of rain. In a plantation house on Edisto Island, however, I had shelter long enough to permit my reading again “Doctor Antonio.”…Crossing the Ashley [River], we bivouacked on the other side of the bridge over Goose Creek.”¹ The men there joined with the thousands from Gen. Hardee’s command streaming out of Charleston, and followed what is modern U.S. Route 52 northward. Pvt. Hutson shared that on occasion the artillery drivers, weary of the saddle, swapped places with the gunners. “None of the cannoneers rode on limber chests, caissons, or other wagons,” wrote C.A. DeSaussure. They carried “blanket, spare clothes (if any) frying pan, tin cup,  plate, etc. With these we walked and walked and walked.”² The longer they marched, the more the men lightened their loads by discarding personal possessions along the side of the road. After departing Monck’s Corner, C.W.. Hutson wrote, “The weather was fine, the roads pretty good. I began to enjoy myself, the roving life of a regular campaign with its unending possibilities always elating me…. Our next march took us to a point near the Santee [River]. Haunting the region along the line of march in search of prog [discarded items]… I picked up a volume of Shakespeare containing “Merchant of Venice” and other plays. For me, this was a real treasure-trove.”

Aboard Railroad Flatcars

In the meantime, the South Carolina governor recalled several state militia companies to his service, and many other men who hailed from the middle the state deserted over the next weeks out of worry for their families in the wake of Sherman’s troops. “We kept moving slowly nearer to St. Stephen’s depot.” Hutson continued. “On [February] 24^th we marched all day through mud, water, and rain and… at at our bivouac just beyond Kingstree drying our clothes by the lightwood-knot fires.” At Kingstree, they were finally able to load their guns, ammunition wagons, horses, and their weary and footsore bodies onto railway flatcars. C.A. DeSaussure recalled, “[W]e slept under guns and caissons in our wet clothes passing through Florence and up through Darlington and Society Hill until we reached Cheraw.” C.W.. Hutson wrote they, “traveled day and night [on the flatcars] in the rain amid many delays. Reaching Cheraw the last day of February we worked all night getting guns, caissons, and wagons off the train. But little sleep fell to our lot.” Cheraw stood directly in the path of Sherman’s objective at Goldsboro, N.C., and the men enjoyed a relaxing day in the town before it too was evacuated, and the bridge over the PeeDee River burned to impede the federal troops. Upon his arrival in Cheraw, Gen. Sherman was asked by a townsman where he intended to go next. He was said to have replied, “I have about 60,000 men out there, and I intend to go pretty much where I please.”⁴

On Foot Into North Carolina

The roughly 13,000 Confederate troops that left Charleston on February 17 had through recalls and desertions dwindled to about 7,000 effectives as they marched into North Carolina ahead of Sherman’s men toward Rockingham, then east toward Fayetteville. “These pine woods were interminable and the roads were bottomless, especially when traveled on by cannon. The scanty population were [sic] too poor to beg or buy from.” Nevertheless, Pvt. Hutson claimed, “Of our ultimate success I was at this time quite confident, especially after learning we were to be under the command of General [Joseph E.] Johnston. The army was in good spirits up to the time of our knowledge of Lee’s surrender,” which at that point still lay more than a month in the future. Despite Hutson’s assertions, desertions continued and morale flagged, as the army seemed to be doing nothing but running from a fight. They had not yet hooked up with Johnston’s forces, but Hardee realized if they did not turn and fight soon, he would soon have no army left to fight with.

The Beaufort Artillery, called Stuart’s Battery after their commander Capt. H.M. Stuart, was assigned to Hardee’s Corps, (Brig. Gen. William) Taliaferro‘s Division, (Col. Alfred M.) Rhett‘s Brigade.³ The other brigade in Taliaferro’s division was commanded by their former Captain, CSA Brig. Gen. Stephen Elliott, with whom they would indeed once again fight side-by-side. “We were now marching toward Fayetteville,” wrote C.W. Hutson. “The next day we were detached from the line of march and sent off with Rhett’s brigade to keep in check the enemy’s cavalry, reported to be advancing up the turnpike road from Rockingham. We debouched into that road about fifteen miles from Fayetteville and marched up toward the town, tearing up bridges in our rear…. On [March] tenth, drenched to the skin and sleeping but a few hours, we picketed about four miles from Fayetteville.” Gen. Johnston conferred with Gen. Hardee in Fayetteville on February 9, while the men prepared for a battle. “We had been busy throwing up earthworks that never were used, for we evacuated the town before the enemy came up.” Instead, Hardee’s forces abandoned Fayetteville, burning the bridge over the Cape Fear River as they left. Johnston’s orders were for Hardee’s men to delay Sherman’s advance, ascertain their objective (by this time assumed to be either Raleigh or Goldsboro), and unite with the larger Confederate force under Johnston in front of that objective on ground of their choosing – in hopes of eventually uniting with Robert E. Lee’s Virginia troops. Hardee decided to try to isolate and attack one of Sherman’s two wings after it crossed the Cape Fear and marched along the Raleigh Plank Road. The Beaufort Artillery, itching for a fight, would be on the front line of the upcoming ambush.

Adapted from A String of Bells: Stories of a Southern Family © 2020 by Nick J. Guevara, Jr.

¹ C.W. Hutson, “The Beaufort Volunteer Artillery – Experiences of Charles Woodward Hutson” contained in “Records Relating to the BVA,” South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston, S.C. This memoir was written about 1913.

² C.A. DeSuassure “The Story of My Service in the Army of the Confederate States” (1931) contained in “Records Relating to the BVA,” South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston, S.C.

³ Col. Rhett, the son of fire-eating secessionist Robert Barnwell Rhett, had ascended to his present rank and most recent command at Fort Sumter after killing his colonel in a duel, the latest of three he had fought since 1853. He was a stern disciplinarian, and bragged he had shot twelve deserters in the six weeks leading up to the Battle of Averasboro. He was captured on March 15 and described thus by Sherman’s aide Major Henry Hitchcock: “He was a complete specimen of his class: well-educated, fluent, “a gentleman,” in all exterior qualities, of an easy assurance of manner and well-bred self-confidence admirably calculated to make and impression. … But… whose polished manners and easy assurance made only more hideous to me the utterly heartless & selfish ambition & pride of class which gave tone to his whole discourse.”⁴

⁴ Bradley, Mark L., Last Stand in the Carolinas: The Battle of Bentonville, © 1996, Savas-Woodbury, Campbell, CA. p 71, 118,