#53: Harriet Tubman, Guignard Brick Works, and a SC Revolutionary War Essay + Poster contest
For South Carolina history lovers far and wide! Enjoy weekly SC history and upcoming SC historical events
Dear reader,
Welcome to Newsletter #53 of The South Carolina History Newsletter! I’m so happy you’re here.
I’d like to extend a special welcome to the following new subscribers — woohoo!
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Yours truly,
Kate
(Writing from Greenville, SC)
➳ Featured SC History Event
Please enjoy our featured SC History Event below, and click here to visit my SC History Events Calendar that organizes all the upcoming SC history events I have discovered. Please let me know if you’d like to add an event to the calendar! Reply to this email or send me a note at schistorynewsletter@gmail.com.
(Note from Kate: not necessarily an event, but a fun opportunity for Laurens County children. Help me spread the word! ":)
Due Wednesday, May 1st, 2024 | “Laurens County SC250 Committee Essay and Poster Contest For Laurens County School Children” | $100+ prizes!
ESSAY CONTEST
“Research and write a 500-word essay about an individual during the time of the Revolutionary War, who significantly contributed to the war effort in Laurens County. Highlight their role, impact, and how their actions helped in winning the American Revolution. This competition is open to all public, private, and home school students in Laurens County. Include name, age, address, phone number, grade, and school of student. Deadline: May 1, 2024.”
POSTER CONTEST
“Design an 8.5 × 11-inch poster showing Laurens County during the American Revolutionary War. Use your imagination to draw scenes, symbols, and people from that time. Make it colorful and interesting! Deadline: May 1, 2024.”
➳ SC History Fun Facts
I.
Did you know that abolitionist Harriet Tubman was instrumental in leading the Union Army’s Combahee River Raid, which freed more than 750 slaves?
When President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, abolitionist Harriet Tubman considered it a “positive but incomplete step” toward the goal of liberating all Black people from slavery. Tubman turned her efforts towards more direct actions to defeat the Confederacy and effectively became a spy for the Union Army. In early 1863, Tubman used her knowledge of “covert travel and subterfuge” to lead a band of scouts through the land around Port Royal, South Carolina. Under the orders of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, Tubman and her team mapped the unfamiliar terrain and reconnoitered its inhabitants. Tubman later worked alongside Colonel James Montgomery and provided him with key intelligence that aided in the capture of Jacksonville, Florida.
Later that year, Tubman's intelligence gathering played a key role in the raid at Combahee Ferry. On the evening of June 1, 1863 three small ships (Sentinel, USS Harriet A. Weed, and USS John Adams) left Beaufort, SC heading for the Combahee River. They transported 300 men from the 2nd South Carolina, commanded by Colonel Montgomery, with “Company C of the 3rd Rhode Island Heavy Artillery manning the ships' guns.” Harriet Tubman accompanied the troops.
Shortly after leaving Beaufort, the Sentinel ran aground in St. Helena Sound. About 3:00 am on June 2, the two remaining ships arrived at the mouth of the Combahee River at Fields Point, where Montgomery “landed a small detachment under Captain Thompson.” They drove off several Confederate “pickets” (or sentinels) and advanced up the river. Some of the fleeing Confederates rode to the nearby village of Green Pond to sound the alarm. Meanwhile, a company of the 2nd South Carolina under Captain Carver landed two miles above Fields Point at Tar Bluff and deployed into position. The two ships steamed upriver to the Nichols Plantation, where the gunboat Harriet A. Weed anchored.
Carrying the remainder of the 2nd South Carolina and Tubman, the John Adams went upriver to Combahee Ferry, where a temporary pontoon bridge spanned the river. As the Union ship approached, several mounted Confederate soldiers rode over the bridge in the direction of Green Pond. The John Adams fired at them, and troops deployed from the ship set fire to the bridge. Captain Hoyt took his men to the far side, while Captain Brayton, of the 3rd Rhode Island, proceeded up the left riverbank to the Middleton plantation, under orders to “confiscate all property and lay waste to what could not be carried off.”
The John Adams steamed upriver for a short distance until forced to stop by obstructions and pilings in the water. Turning back, she tied up at the causeway. Confederate forces didn’t respond right away as there had been “false alarms” about Union raids shortly before this incident. Though indeed, within a few hours, Confederate reinforcements responded from McPhearsonville, Pocotaligo, Green Pond and Adams Run. Colonel Breeden “arrived with a few guns and opened fire on the retiring Union troops headed back across the causeway.” The John Adams retaliated with its superior firepower, forcing the Confederate soldiers from the causeway and back into the woods.
By this time, the rest of Montgomery's troops had torched William Cruger Heyward's plantation and C.T. Lowndes's rice mill. They destroyed the houses, mills, and outbuildings. At Nichols Plantation, all of the buildings were set on fire. Union forces “took the stores of commodity rice and cotton, as well as supplies of potatoes, corn, and livestock, and left the plantations as smoking ruins.” Although Confederate commanders sent troops in the direction of the raid, upon arrival, they found the Union forces out of reach. Outgunned and outnumbered, the Southern reinforcements retreated to their previous positions.
The slaves working in the fields were unaware of the Emancipation Proclamation, were wary when they first saw the approaching Union ships and troops. However, word spread quickly that the forces were there to liberate them. Many ran to the riverbank and begged to be taken on board the ships, despite the efforts of overseers and Confederate soldiers to stop them.
Hundreds of slaves stood on the shore. When the small boats put out to get them, they all wanted to get in at once. After the boats were filled to capacity and beyond, the throng of escapees still ashore held on to the boats to prevent them from leaving, putting the boats in danger of capsizing. Oarsmen tried “beating them on their hands, but the freed workers would not let go.” The small boats made several trips back and forth to load those who wanted to leave.
The Union ships returned to Beaufort the next day. Soldiers took the freedmen to stay at the First Baptist Church before they were transported to a resettlement camp on St. Helena Island. Due to the efforts in planning and intelligence provided by Harriet Tubman and her contacts, more than 750 slaves were freed as a result of Montgomery's raid. Newspapers heralded Tubman's "patriotism, sagacity, energy, [and] ability" in the raid, and she was praised for her recruiting efforts — more than 100 of the newly liberated men joined the Union army. Although her contributions have sometimes been exaggerated, her role in the raid led to her being widely credited “as the first woman to lead U.S. troops in an armed assault.”
The official Union reports of the raid have never been found. Numerous newspaper accounts reported the raid and included comments by the commanding officers.
The pro-Union Commonwealth reported:
Colonel Montgomery and his gallant band of 300 black soldiers under the guidance of a black woman, dashed into the enemy's country, struck a bold and effective blow, destroying millions of dollars worth of commissary stores, cotton and lordly dwellings, and striking terror into the heart of rebeldom, brought off nearly 800 slaves and thousands of dollars worth of property, without losing a man or receiving a scratch. It was a glorious consummation.... The colonel was followed by a speech from the black woman who led the raid and under whose inspiration it was originated and conducted. For sound sense and real native eloquence her address would do honor to any man, and it created a great sensation.
The pro-Southern Charleston Mercury reported:
We have gathered some additional particulars of the recent destructive Yankee raid along the banks of the Combahee. The latest official dispatch from Gen. WALKER, dated Green Pond, eleven o'clock Tuesday night, and which was received here on Wednesday morning, conveyed intelligence that the enemy had entirely disappeared. It seems that the first landing of the Vandels [sic], whose force consisted mainly of three 'companies, officered by whites, took place at Field Point, on the plantation of Dr. R. L. BAKER, at the mouth of the Combahee River. After destroying the residence and outbuildings, the incendiaries proceeded along the river bank, visiting successively the plantations of Mr. OLIVER MIDDLETON, Mr. ANDREW W. BURNETT, Mr. WM. KIRKLAND, Mr. JOSHUA NICHOLLS, Mr. JAMES PAUL, Mr. MANIGAULT, Mr. CHAS. T. LOWNDES and Mr. WM. C. HEYWARD. After pillaging the premises of these gentlemen, the enemy set fire to the residences, outbuildings and whatever grain, etc., they could find. The last place at which they stopped was the plantation of WM. C. HEYWARD, and, after their work of devastation there had been consummated, they destroyed the pontoon bridge at Combahee Ferry. They then drew off, taking with them between 600 and 700 slaves, belonging chiefly, as we are informed, to Mr. WM. C. HEYWARD and Mr. C.T. LOWNDES. The residences on these plantations are located at different distances from the river, varying in different cases from one to two miles. On the plantation of Mr. NICHOLLS between 8000 and 10,000 bushels of rice were destroyed. Besides his residence and outbuildings, which were burned, he lost a choice library of rare books, valued at $10,000. Several overseers are missing, and it is supposed that they are in the hands of the enemy.
II.
Did you know that clay from the Congaree river made the bricks that built some of Columbia’s most historic buildings?
James Sanders Guignard (1780–1856) was the grandson of a French immigrant to Charleston, and began making brick along the Congaree River near Columbia in 1803 — at first for personal use, then for commercial purposes under the name Guignard Brick Works.
During the Civil War, brick production stopped, and there was a gap in the family business until Gabriel Alexander Guignard — James Sanders Guignard I’s great-grandson — revived the business in the 1860s. He mined clay extensively from “alluvial deposits along the west bank of the Congaree River southward to the Cayce granite quarry and eventually to the vicinity of Congaree Creek.” He installed a private rail line to bring the clay to the plant, which was then located south of the Gervais Street–Meeting Street bridge. The operation became wildly successful, and by 1891, “G.A. Guignard, Brick Manufacturer” was producing approximately 2 million bricks a year.
Between 1895-1900, four cotton mills were built using Guignard bricks including Richland Mill, Granby Mill, Olympia Mill, and Capital City Mill. National Loan and Exchange Bank Building (Columbia’s first skyscraper), Hotel Jefferson, and the interior of the South Carolina State House were also customers. Bricks from the Guignard plant were also used in many of Columbia’s historic buildings, including the Confederate Printing Plant at the corner of Gervais and Huger Streets.
What remains today of the Guignard Brickworks complex are excellent surviving examples of 4 “beehive kilns,” a historic brick office, and remnants of the old train track. Three of the four kilns in the photo below were built in 1920, and the fourth was rebuilt in 1932 when the original structure burned down.
After Gabriel Alexander Guignard’s death in 1926, the brick operation was managed by his brother Christopher Gadsden Guignard and sister Susan Richardson Guignard. In 1956 the Guignard family sold a substantial interest in the company to a group of local investors, and eventually operations were moved “from the banks of the river to a new plant near U.S. Highway 1 and Interstate 20 east of Lexington, as clay was no longer readily available at the original riverfront site, and the equipment there was outdated.”
The site of the original plant on the west bank of the Congaree River became an apartment complex, but thankfully the beehive firing kilns still stand!
Have you visited these historic kilns? If so, leave a comment below!
➳ Quote from an SC historical figure
“I nebber see such a sight. We laughed, an' laughed, an' laughed. Here you'd see a woman wid a pail on her head, rice a smokin' in it jus' as she'd taken it from de fire, young one hangin' on behind, one han' roun' her forehead to hold on, t'other han' diggin' into de rice-pot, eatin' wid all its might; hold of her dress two or three more; down her back a bag with a pig in it. One woman brought two pigs, a white one an' a black one; we took 'em all on board; named de white pig Beauregard, and the black pig Jeff Davis. Sometimes de women would come wid twins hangin' roun' der necks; 'pears like I never see so many twins in my life; bags on der shoulders, baskets on der heads, and young ones taggin' behin', all loaded; pigs squealin', chickens screamin', young ones squallin'.”
—Harriet Tubman, quoted on the liberation of the slaves in the Combahee River Raid, in an 1869 biography of her life written by Sarah Hopkins Bradford
Sources used in today’s newsletter:
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