If you were researching your family's lineage and discovered that your ancestors took part in one of the most famous American wars in history, it would be difficult to not dig deeper to learn more. Born and raised in South Carolina, James L. Harvey, Jr. became curious about his own family when he realized that, even as an adult, he knew nothing about his ancestors. Through extensive research, he was led to knowledge on his great-grandfathers as well as other relatives and how the Civil War impacted all of their lives in South Carolina, and shares all of their stories in The Civil War In My South Carolina Lowcountry. Harvey reaches out to those interested in both American history - specifically the Civil War - as well as genealogical research through the stories of his ancestors. From a historical perspective, readers will be educated on large-scale battles such as the Battle of Tulifinny, the Battle of Honey Hill, and the Battle of Bentonville, to name a few. Readers will also learn of the Confederate regiments Harvey's ancestors served with - the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, the 17th Infantry Regiment, the 11th Infantry Regiment, and Hampton's Legion, among others - as well as each regiment's officers and staff, assignments, battles, and rosters of companies. Information is also included on the first all-black volunteer regiment (USCT) organized in Port Royal, South Carolina. From a genealogical perspective, Harvey honors his great-grandfathers' services in the war and the lives they shared with their families through the good and the bad. He shares his family's Christian beliefs and the impact the church had during this dark time in history. Coming from a line of poor farmers who did what they believed was right in defending their state, Harvey ensures his family name will live on throughout history.

Some of the most dramatic and consequential events of the Civil War era took place in the South Carolina Lowcountry between Charleston and Savannah. From Robert Barnwell Rhett's inflammatory 1844 speech in Bluffton calling for secession, to the last desperate attempts by Confederate forces to halt Sherman's juggernaut, the region was torn apart by war. This history tells the story through the experiences of two radically different military units--the Confederate Beaufort Volunteer Artillery and the U.S. 1st South Carolina Regiment, the first black Union regiment to fight in the war--both organized in Beaufort, the heart of the Lowcountry.

W. Scott Poole teaches South Carolina history at the College of Charleston.

Some of the most dramatic and consequential events of the Civil War era took place in the South Carolina Lowcountry between Charleston and Savannah. From Robert Barnwell Rhett's inflammatory 1844 speech in Bluffton calling for secession, to the last desperate attempts by Confederate forces to halt Sherman's juggernaut, the region was torn apart by war. This history tells the story through the experiences of two radically different military units--the Confederate Beaufort Volunteer Artillery and the U.S. 1st South Carolina Regiment, the first black Union regiment to fight in the war--both organized in Beaufort, the heart of the Lowcountry.

Spanning more than one hundred miles across rice fields, salt marshes, and seven rivers and creeks, the Charleston & Savannah Railroad was designed to revolutionize the economy of South Carolina's lowcountry by linking key port cities. This history of the railroad records the story of the C&S and of the men who managed it during wartime.

Tracing the intersecting lives of a Confederate plantation owner and a free black Union soldier, Barbara L. Bellows’ Two Charlestonians at War offers a poignant allegory of the fraught, interdependent relationship between wartime enemies in the Civil War South. Through the eyes of these very different soldiers, Bellows brings a remarkable, new perspective to the oft-told saga of the Civil War. Recounted in alternating chapters, the lives of Charleston natives born a mile a part, Captain Thomas Pinckney and Sergeant Joseph Humphries Barquet, illuminate one another’s motives for joining the war as well as the experiences that shaped their worldviews. Pinckney, a rice planter and scion of one of America’s founding families, joined the Confederacy in hope of reclaiming an idealized agrarian past; and Barquet, a free man of color and brick mason, fought with the Union to claim his rights as an American citizen. Their circumstances set the two men on seemingly divergent paths that nonetheless crossed on the embattled coast of South Carolina. Born free in 1823, Barquet grew up among Charleston’s tight-knit community of the “colored elite.” During his twenties, he joined the northward exodus of free blacks leaving the city and began his nomadic career as a tireless campaigner for black rights and abolition. In 1863, at age forty, he enlisted in the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry—the renowned “Glory” regiment of northern black men. His varied challenges and struggles, including his later frustrated attempts to play a role in postwar Republican politics in Illinois, provide a panoramic view of the free black experience in nineteenth-century America. In contrast to the questing Barquet, Thomas Pinckney remained deeply connected to the rice fields and maritime forests of South Carolina. He greeted the arrival of war by establishing a home guard to protect his family’s Santee River plantations that would later integrate into the 4th South Carolina Cavalry. After the war, Pinckney distanced himself from the racist violence of Reconstruction politics and focused on the daunting task of restoring his ruined plantations with newly freed laborers. The two Charlestonians’ chance encounter on Morris Island, where in 1864 Sergeant Barquet stood guard over the captured Captain Pinckney, inspired Bellows’ compelling narrative. Her extensive research adds rich detail to our knowledge of the dynamics between whites and free blacks during this tumultuous era. Two Charlestonians at War gives readers an intimate depiction of the ideological distance that might separate American citizens even as their shared history unites them.

"The little-known story of a British diplomat who serves as a spy in South Carolina at the dawn of the Civil War, posing as a friend to slave-owning aristocrats when he was actually telling Britain not to support the Confederacy"--