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Chapter 7: up the Edisto.
In reading military history, one finds the main interest to lie, undoubtedly, in the great campaigns, where a man, a regiment, a brigade, is but a pawn in the game.
But there is a charm also in the more free and adventurous life of partisan warfare, where, if the total sphere be humbler, yet the individual has more relative importance, and the sense of action is more personal and keen.
This is the reason given by the eccentric Revolutionary biographer,
Weems, for writing the Life of
Washington first, and then that of
Marion.
And there were, certainly, in the early adventures of the colored troops in the Department of the South, some of the same elements of picturesqueness that belonged to
Marion's band, on the same soil, with the added feature that the blacks were fighting for their personal liberties, of which
Marion had helped to deprive them.
It is stated by
Major-General Gillmore, in his “Siege of
Charleston,” as one of the three points in his preliminary strategy, that an expedition was sent up the
Edisto River to destroy a bridge on the Charleston and Savannah Railway.
As one of the early raids of the colored troops, this expedition may deserve narration, though it was, in a strategic point of view, a disappointment.
It has already been told, briefly and on the whole with truth, by
Greeley and others, but I will venture on a more complete account.
The project dated back earlier than
General Gillmore's
