The Beaufort Volunteer Artillery

A Proud Martial History

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Constitution of the United States, Amendment #2 (1789)

Beaufort, South Carolina and the surrounding sea islands can rightly boast of a rich military history. Long before nearby Parris Island became home to the United States Marine Corps recruit training center, it was the location of the area’s first European settlements. Santa Elena (Spain) and Charlesfort (France) were two of several founded and abandoned as the prospective frontiersmen battled and bartered with the native Indians, pirates, and each other. The British gained a tenuous foothold and chartered the Carolina Colony in 1711.  Colonial fighting men like John “Tuscarora Jack” Barnwell and  Thomas Nairn presaged the proud martial spirit of the South Carolina Low country.

Organized militias based in Beaufort have trained and protected settlers since before the Revolutionary War. Our fifth great-grandfather, shipbuilder and patriot James Black (1740-1780), served in the South Carolina Militia and was mortally bayoneted by a British Redcoat at the Battle of Stono Ferry in 1779. Thomas Bell Jr. (1753-1845) appears on a roll of Captain John Jenkins‘s St. Helena Volunteers in October 1775.* Thomas’ grandson – and James’ great-grandson – was Julius Bythewood Bell (1834-1897). He too was called upon to defend his family and friends when rebellion again began to simmer three generations later. His militia was known as the Beaufort Volunteer Artillery (BVA).

Southern Aristocracy, Social Amusements, and the Beaufort Volunteer Artillery

The BVA was officially organized in 1776. In 1798 the first Beaufort Arsenal was constructed to serve as a headquarters and armory for the unit. The modern arsenal, a yellow-gray fortress-like building on Craven Street, sits on the same plot and dates to the 1850s. Today it serves as the Beaufort museum and visitor center. Before the Civil War, the BVA was administered and commanded by the richer sea island cotton planters and other prominent local families. It became something of a social club for these influential families of the Beaufort District.

Historian Lawrence Rowland wrote of the period before the war, “Because of the wealth of the town, Beaufort was an unusually social community. The Agricultural Society had dinners and sponsored debates. The Beaufort Volunteer Artillery held ceremonial musters and parades and sponsored the annual Fourth of July banquet at Arsenal Hall.… Major John G. Barnwell, commander of the unit, preside[d] over these festive events, calling the guests to order with a huge brass drum that sat by his chair.”¹

In an unpublished memoir, BVA Civil War veteran C.A. DeSaussure wrote the BVA “had long been an institution in Beaufort. It was the ambition of every boy to belong to it when he grew up. It was composed of the best young men of the section.” Its arsenal, “a half square surrounded by a thick, brick and “tabby” wall… with massive gates under a great archway. It had various storerooms within these walls for powder, shot, etc. and a great hall which was an auditorium or ball room, convertible into barracks at night. Under this hall, which was the second floor, there was the open space for the mounted cannon. Frequent balls and “hops” were given, and the fairs and other functions of the community were held there, always under the auspices of the battery. The young men were brought up in proficiency in the athletics of that day – horsemanship, boxing, fencing, swimming, rowing, handling sail boats, etc. They were thoroughly familiar with the network of bays, sounds, rivers, and creeks and were thus thoroughly suited to the service to which General [Robert E.] Lee [ultimately] assigned them.“²

Guns and Uniforms

The BVA was a Light Artillery Company who also trained as Infantry. At the outset of war they possessed four brass 12-pounder “Napoleon” cannons, smoothbore guns whose range paled when compared to the relatively new rifled guns possessed by many Union field artillery units. The BVA guns could be extremely effective, however, and fired shrapnel, canister, and grapeshot in addition to shells. As war approached, the families of Beaufort and the men of the BVA “gaily prepared for the coming conflict… with patriotic fervor.”³ BVA veteran James R. Stuart wrote the “uniform was a cocked hat, a tight-fitting swallow-tailed coat, with three rows of buttons in front, braided across in red, and they carried a curved cutlass. A very quaint old turn out.”⁴

The BVA uniform also contained broad red stripes on the outseam of their blue pants, designating them as artillerymen. A company officer later wrote, “[T]he men lounged around camp in their blue flannel shirts and tucked up pants, or drilled and waited for the cock-sure fight.“⁵

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

*The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine Vol. III No. 3, July 1902

¹ The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina Volume 1, 1514-1861 by L. Rowland, A. Moore, and G. Rogers ©1996 Univ. of South Carolina Press pg 381

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 Theodore Rosengarten, Tombee: Portrait of a Cotton Planter (© 1986, Morrow & Co.) pg 212, 213

⁴ Letter of James R. Stuart (Aug 15, 1911) contained in “Records Relating to the BVA,” South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston, S.C.

⁵ The B.V.A. in the Civil War: Bay Point – Waiting for the Inevitable – The Value of Heavy Guns by J.A.H. (probably Lt. J.A. Hamilton) in The Beaufort Gazette, July 30, 1903, pg 4