Feb., 1864. |
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Hilton Head, with the impression that active loyalty in Florida was a myth.
Nothing of importance, bearing upon the great conflict, occurred in that State from the battle of Olustee, until the end of the war.1
Very little occurred in South Carolina during the year 1864 that affected the final result of the struggle.
All through the year, there was occasional shelling of Charleston, at long range, from Morris Island, with very little effect.
In May and June, as we have observed, Gillmore was on the James River, and all was quiet around Charleston.
At the beginning of July, the four brigades of Birney, Saxton, Hatch, and Schimmelfennig, were concentrated on John's Island, and, with a gun-boat on the North Edisto, made some demonstrations against Confederate works there, but with no advantageous result.
The Twenty-sixth United States negro troops, Colonel Silliman, were sent to take a Confederate battery, three miles northwest of Legareville.
They had no cannon, and were only six hundred strong.
They made five desperate charges, and lost ninety-seven men killed and wounded.
They were driven off, with the loss of their commander, prostrated by sun-stroke.
This was called the battle of bloody bridge.
The object of the expedition does not clearly appear.
After that, all was quiet until Foster moved, in anticipation of the approach of Sherman to the borders of the sea.2
In North Carolina there were some stirring and important events in 1864, particularly ;at the close of the year.
After the twelve thousand veteran troops were taken from Foster and sent to the Department of the South,3 the National force in that State was light; and, in February, General Pickett, commanding the Confederate troops in that section?
made an effort to capture New Berne.
On the 17th,
he attacked an outpost at Bachelor's Creek, eight miles above New Berne, held by the One Hundred and Thirty-second New York.
It was captured, with one hundred men, when Pickett advanced on New Berne.
Then, a part of his force, under Colonel Wood, went in small boats and boarded the gun-boat Underwriter, lying near the wharf, and not more than one hundred yards from three batteries.
Before the captors could get up her steam and move off, these batteries opened upon her, when the Confederates, seeing no chance to secure her, set her on-fire and abandoned her. Pickett soon afterward withdrew, without attacking the defenses of New Berne, and claimed a victory, inasmuch, he said, as he had killed and wounded one hundred of the Nationals, made two hundred and eighty of them prisoners, captured two guns and three hundred small-arms, and destroyed a fine gun-boat of eight hundred horse-power, mounting four heavy guns.
His own loss, he said, was only thirty-five killed and wounded.
A little later in the year, Plymouth, near the mouth of the Roanoke River, in North Carolina, was attacked by about seven thousand Confederates
1 During the winter, extensive salt works belonging to the Confederates, on West Bay and Lake Ocola, valued at $3,000,000, were destroyed by orders of Admiral Bailey. In May, there was a gathering at Jackson, called the “State Convention of Unionists of Florida,” and these appointed six delegates to the Republican Convention in Baltimore; but the affair amounted to nothing effective. At midsummer, General Birney moved out from Jacksonville, by order of General Foster, to Callahan Station, on the Fernandina railway,
July 20. |
2 See. note 1, page 412.
3 See page 192.
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