Brigadier-General Ellison Capers, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 5, South Carolina
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[202] employed in this business, always under the protection of the gunboats. One of these gunboat raiding parties steamed up the Combahee on the 2d of June, burned four fine residences, with all their valuable contents, and six mills, and carried off about 700 negroes. Later in the month a greater part of the town of Bluffton, on May river, was burned by a gunboat raid, and the utmost vigilance was required by troops stationed on the rivers to protect the property of citizens from wanton destruction. In reporting the raid up the Combahee to the secretary of war, General Hunter, after expressing pleasure at the success which Colonel Montgomery had achieved, continues:

This expedition is but the initial experiment of a system of incursions which will penetrate up all the inlets, creeks and rivers of this department, and to be used in which I am now having several of our light draught transport steamers supplied with bulwarks of boiler iron, etc. . . . Colonel Montgomery with his forces will repeat his incursions as rapidly as possible in different directions, injuring the enemy all he can and carrying away their slaves, thus rapidly filling up the South Carolina regiments in the departments, of which there are now four. The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts regiment (colored), Col-onel Shaw commanding, arrived to-day in good condition, and appears to be an excellent regiment, over 900 strong. They will soon have abundant and very important employment, as will all other regiments, white or colored, that may be sent to reinforce this department.