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Chapter 15: Potter's Raid.
While at
Columbia, S. C.,
General Sherman sent and destroyed the railroad to
Kingsville and the
Wateree Bridge.
From
Cheraw he broke the railroad trestles toward
Florence as far as
Darlington, and the enemy burned the railroad bridge over the
Pedee.
Between
Florence and
Sumterville was a vast amount of rollingstock thus hemmed in.
Sherman, considering that this should be destroyed before the roads could be repaired, and that the food supplies in that section should be exhausted, wrote
General Gillmore from
Fayetteville, N. C., directing him to execute this work.
He suggested that
Gillmore's force be twenty-five hundred men, lightly equipped, to move from
Georgetown or the
Santee Bridge, that the troops be taken from
Charleston or
Savannah, and added,—
‘I don't feel disposed to be over-generous, and should not hesitate to burn Charleston, Savannah, and Wilmington, or either of them, if the garrisons were needed. . . . Those cars and locomotives should be destroyed if to do it costs you five hundred men.’
These instructions caused the concentration of a selected force at
Georgetown, of which the Fifty-fourth formed a part.
The resultant movement, called ‘
Potter's Raid,’ during which almost the last encounters of the
Rebellion occurred, is little known, as it took place when momentous military events were taking place elsewhere.
