Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

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Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
the sailors and marines went two or three miles out of their way. A brigade of
infantry commanded by Brig. Gen. Edward E. Potter landed by 4:00 p.m. and
pushed after the Naval Brigade. Not until the soldiers caught up with the sailors
did anyone discover the mistake. 54
The troops retraced their steps to the crossroads where they had gone astray.
There the infantry left the exhausted sailors and their cannon and went on. By this
time it was dark. The soldiers took a road that led them six miles off course. They
then turned around and made their way back, not stopping for the night until about
2:00 a.m. on 30 November. “The men had then marched fifteen miles, had been
up most of the previous night, had worked hard during the day, and were unable to
march farther,” Hatch reported. “The distance marched, if upon the right road, would
have carried us to the railroad, and I have since learned we would have met, at that
time, little or no opposition.” By daybreak, the sailors had found horses to draw all
but two of their cannon. They left that pair at the crossroads along with an infantry
guard of four companies from the 54th Massachusetts and moved to join Potter’s
brigade a few miles up the road. The other infantry brigade, commanded by Colonel
Hartwell of the 55th Massachusetts Infantry, had spent all night getting ashore. Little
more than one regiment had joined the main body when the Union force moved forward
at 9:00 a.m. Fifteen minutes later, it met the enemy. 55
The Confederate leader, Maj. Gen. Gustavus W. Smith of the Georgia State
Troops, had decided to disregard his governor’s order not to take his command
beyond the state line. Smith delivered some twelve hundred Georgia militia and a
few cannon by rail at Grahamville about 8:00 a.m. on 30 November. It was these
men who met the Union advance. Other Confederate troops arrived during the
day, but they never numbered more than fourteen hundred in the line of battle.
Outnumbered three to one by the federal force, the Confederates fell back gradually
for some three-and-a-half miles until they reached a hastily selected position
on Honey Hill. The Union troops followed them up a narrow road through dense
woods that more than one officer called “thick jungle,” stopping whenever the
retreating Confederates did and exchanging artillery shots. The 35th USCI “was
ordered up, to move through the thicket along the right side of the road,” Colonel
Beecher told his fiancée. Orders were to flank the Confederate cannon and charge
them. “I did so,” Beecher continued:
But the enemy ran the guns off & I came right in front of a strong earth work that
nobody knew anything about. . . . The boys opened fire without orders, and the
bushes were so thick that the companies were getting mixed. I halted and reformed
the companies. Then got orders to move to the left of the earthwork and try to carry
it. I led off by the left flank, the boys starting finely & crying out “follow de cunnel.”
It was a perfect jungle all laced with grape vines, & when I got on the left of the
earth work and closed up I found that another regiment had marched right through
mine & cut it off, so that I only had about 20 men. We could see the rebel gunners
load. I told the boys to fire on them & raise a yell, hoping to make them think I had
54 Ibid., pp. 422 (quotation), 436, 587.
55 Ibid., pp. 422 (quotation), 435.