[91] Edisto or Pon Pon rivers. The first two raids were eminently successful, bringing away recruits, provisions, etc., in addition to the more especial object of each enterprise. The third failed of success from the want of water for the boats, which grounded repeatedly,—the Pon Pon River being a tidal inlet, almost dry at low water,—so that they were got off with difficulty, and the loss of the smallest one, including two small guns, which were afterwards fished up by the Confederates and afterwards retaken by the 1st South Carolina in an engagement,—a curious coincidence. The regiment was repeatedly in action with shore batteries and sustained itself well, but failed in the chief object of the enterprise, which was to ascend as high as the Charleston and Savannah railroad and cut it.1 Due credit should also be given the State of Massachusetts for the enormous service rendered by General Saxton as military governor in organizing the vast number of freedmen and refugees upon the Sea Islands, and first proving, on a large scale, that the plantations could be successfully carried on by free labor. In this respect he, more than any other man, solved the problem for the nation, but as it was really the application of military methods to civil operations, it cannot properly find an ampler place here. For the time, the Sea Islands were an object lesson, constantly visited from all parts of the country for the study of a difficult and momentous social problem.
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[91] Edisto or Pon Pon rivers. The first two raids were eminently successful, bringing away recruits, provisions, etc., in addition to the more especial object of each enterprise. The third failed of success from the want of water for the boats, which grounded repeatedly,—the Pon Pon River being a tidal inlet, almost dry at low water,—so that they were got off with difficulty, and the loss of the smallest one, including two small guns, which were afterwards fished up by the Confederates and afterwards retaken by the 1st South Carolina in an engagement,—a curious coincidence. The regiment was repeatedly in action with shore batteries and sustained itself well, but failed in the chief object of the enterprise, which was to ascend as high as the Charleston and Savannah railroad and cut it.1 Due credit should also be given the State of Massachusetts for the enormous service rendered by General Saxton as military governor in organizing the vast number of freedmen and refugees upon the Sea Islands, and first proving, on a large scale, that the plantations could be successfully carried on by free labor. In this respect he, more than any other man, solved the problem for the nation, but as it was really the application of military methods to civil operations, it cannot properly find an ampler place here. For the time, the Sea Islands were an object lesson, constantly visited from all parts of the country for the study of a difficult and momentous social problem.
1 See General Gillmore's report in Official War Records, 46, p. 8, and Colonel Higginson's report, p. 194. Compare Higginson's Army Life in a Black Regiment.
2 Official War Records, Serial No. 39, pp. 156-170. It is worth noting that in addition to the troops here named both Hooker and Doubleday wrote at different times to the War Department asking, as a favor, to have the 34th Mass. Infantry (Colonel Wells) sent to them. (Official War Records, 39, pp. 54, 91.)
Boston, Wright & Potter, 1895-96.
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