When Port Royal and Beaufort fell Robert E. Lee, the commander of the new Department of South Carolina, changed the coastal-defense strategy. Prior to Lee the focus was on protecting the entrances to rivers and bays. However, the overwhelming superiority of the Federal Navy made this strategy impractical. Lee decided to shift his defenses upriver where the shallower and narrower rivers made it harder for Union ships to penetrate inland. He would concentrate on protecting the inland 120-mile Charleston and Savannah Railroad with forts and batteries along the rivers downstream from the bridges that crossed them. He would be able to stop Union advances from penetrating into the state by quickly shifting troops along the railroad. One of these rivers was the Combahee River protected by batteries at Field’s Point, Tar Bluff, and the Combahee Ferry (map shown below). It would become the target of one of the most famous raids and Emancipation events in the south during the Civil War.

On the evening of June 1, 1863, 300 men of the 2nd SC Infantry (an African-American unit) and Company C of the Third Rhode Island Heavy Artillery boarded three ships: the Sentinel, the Harriet A Weed and the John Adams in Beaufort, SC. Colonel James Montgomery would lead the raid. On the raid were Harriet Tubman, the famed Underground Railroad conductor, two African American pilots Samuel Hayward and Charles Simmons, and the African American scout Walter D. Plowden. Tubman and Plowden had learned through their network of informants that the area was relatively lightly defended. In addition, they had identified for destruction considerable stockpiles of cotton and rice there that would be used to aid in the war effort.

Tubman and Montgomery knew each other before the war likely through John Brown and the Underground Railroad. As a result Montgomery had a high degree of respect for her. Their collaboration on the planning and execution of the Combahee River Raid resulted in one of the largest Emancipation events in the Department of the South during the Civil War. Montgomery, Tubman and Plowden were on the lead boat as Plowden guided them around mines in the river. There is no evidence that Tubman was armed during the raid as depicted in the movie Harriet.

The Sentinel ran aground in St. Helena Sound before entering the river. This was unfortunate because it meant that fewer slaves could be liberated. At Field’s Point they found the blockhouse and rifle trenches deserted. Confederate pickets stationed there had left to alert forces at Green Pond of the raid. Montgomery left Captain Thompson with one company of troops there. Two miles upstream at Tar Bluff Union forces took the small earthwork. Company E under Captain Carver was left behind to guard it and the rest of the force headed upriver to the Combahee Ferry. Confederate pickets at the Ferry left to warn the plantations. Captain Hoyt raided plantations on the Colleton side, while Captain Brayton attacked Oliver Middleton’s Newport Plantation. They met little resistance along the river and set fire to multiple plantations burning 34 mansions to the ground. They destroyed the plantations of William C. Heyward, Charles T. Lowndes, Dr. R.L. Baker, Oliver Middleton, Andrew W. Burnett, W.M. Kirkland, Joshua Nichols, and James Paul. Confederates arrived from McPhersonville, Pocotaglio, Green Pond and Adams Run but were driven off by the guns of the John Adams. The pontoon bridge over the river was burned. Whistles were blown on the steamers as a prearranged signal to the slaves on the plantations to come to the river and board the ships. About 850 slaves were rescued and taken to the First Baptist Church in Beaufort and then to a camp on St. Helena Island. William C. Heyward’s plantation Cypress reported every building burned to the ground except for the slave quarters with 199 slaves rescued. Of these slaves more than 150 enlisted in a new regiment formed at Hilton Head, the Third SC Infantry.

The site of the Combahee Ferry is shown below. The former ferry site is now a public boat launch. Although archeological studies have been done of the area the only interpretation of the raid is the metal sign shown below at the entrance road to the boat launch.

Site of the future Harriet Tubman monument in Beaufort, SC.

Model of the Tubman monument by sculptor Ed Dwight

Sources

The Combahee River Raid, Harriet Tubman and Lowcountry Liberation by Jeff W. Gregg.

Nothing but smoldering ruins and the parched and crisp skeletons of once magnificent old live oak and palmetto groves: the Combahee River Raid and Efforts to Preserve and Interpret the Raid by Edward Salo