TEXT: Robert Stockton
PHOTOS: Molly Hayes

The site of a crucial Civil War battle in the defense of Charleston on June 16, 1862, Secessionville today is a quiet neighborhood in suburban James Island. For that reason, the Battle of Secessionville is reenacted, not on-site, but miles away at Boone Hall Plantation, where there is more room for the gallant commemorators to maneuver.

Despite the nostalgia, the real thing was more guts than glory, as war usually is.

Early in the war, Federal forces took Port Royal and Beaufort, and the Confederates knew it was a matter of time before an attack on our city was made. Charleston had become the “Cradle of Secession,” for here was signed the Ordinance by which South Carolina became the first state to leave the Union. As a result the Union Army may have viewed Charleston as a prize. To safeguard the city, a rough ring of fortifications was hastily erected around it.

The area’s terrain assisted in the city’s defense, particularly at Secessionville, which had been a planters’ summer village and was situated on a small oblong peninsula on the southeast side of James Island. (The name Secessionville itself actually had little to do with the Civil War. It had been adopted some years earlier when the founders “seceded” from the older summer village of Centerville on James Island.)

The same geography that made Secessionville healthy also made it easy to fortify. Early in 1862, earthworks, roughly in the shape of an “M,” were erected across the narrow neck of the peninsula, with emplacements for howitzers and other guns. A multi-storied observation tower lent to the defense’s designation as the Tower Battery. The battery was still incomplete when, in June of 1862, Union soldiers landed and occupied the southern tip of James Island.

Naturally, the Confederate gunners at the Tower Battery delighted in lobbing shells into the Union encampment, and naturally that gave the Union commander, Brig. Gen. Henry W. Benham, an excuse to stage a “reconnaissance in force.” The Tower Battery was manned at the time by a small force, mainly of gunners and engineers. The Union attack, at 4 a.m. on June 16, was meant to be a surprise, but the Confederates had set out pickets. The alarm was sounded, a message was sent and infantry reinforcements arrived via a footbridge connecting the tip of the peninsula with the main part of James Island.

What ensued was a bloodbath lasting three and a half hours, a vicious, sometimes hand-to-hand fight. The Confederates, numbering about 1,250, had 52 men killed and 144 wounded, the latter including the battery commander, Lt. Col. Thomas G. Lamar. The Union force had superior numbers —about 3,500 troops committed to the assault, but also greater casualties— 683 killed or wounded. After the battle, the Confederates found the bodies of more than 300 Union soldiers in the field in front of the battery. They buried them in a mass grave after stripping them of their weapons, boots, and even buttons. Many had been blown apart by cannon fire, others were killed by small arms. One Confederate sharpshooter was credited with killing 30 Union soldiers. The desperate defenders used anything at hand, including whisky bottles. But the battery held, and the Union retreated.

General Benham was court marshaled for his role in the Union defeat. Colonel Lamar later died of a fever and the site was renamed Fort Lamar in his honor. Most of the earthworks are still there, protected as part of a National Register historic district, and the site was marked by an obelisk monument in 2003.

The Union never again attacked Secessionville. The capture of Charleston was delayed until February of 1865. Some historians conclude that had Secessionville fallen, Charleston swiftly would have followed, and the bloody war might have ended much sooner.