Maj. Edward Manigault, CSA

Major Edward Manigault, one of the commanding officers ordered by General P. G. T. Beauregard to document his unit's daily operations, began a diary in July 1863 that would become one of the most informative records to survive the Civil War. Covering thirteen months of combat in one of the Confederacy's rare siege artillery units, Manigault's journal offers a day-by-day, at times hour-by-hour, account of life on the front lines. Especially notable for its description of artillery training, Manigault's diary vividly depicts his unit's participation in such well-known engagements as the battle for Battery Wagner and the attempt to sieze the U.S. gunboat Marblehead. https://www.sc.edu/uscpress/books/1996/3127.html

Operations against Charleston, February 9-13, 1865, Part 2: The Last Battles about Charleston

While Major-General William T. Sherman’s forces in the interior of South Carolina were working across the South Fork of the Edisto River on February 10, 1865, outside Charleston, a small Federal force was mounting one of the many demonstrations directed to keep Confederate forces pinned to the coast. The demonstration was, to say the least, uninspired.

On the Confederate lines, Major Edward Manigault, commanding the right end of the Confederate line on James Island, came up to the picket line in response to reports of activity. On the line were, according to Manigault’s recollections, 100 men of the 2nd South Carolina Heavy Artillery and 20 cavalrymen. Reinforcements came in the form of a three companies from the Palmetto Guards and a detachment of dismounted cavalry, amounting to 188 men. Distributing this force, Manigault had 160 men at Grimball’s Causeway and 48 at River’s Causeway. The remainder were held in reserve or on the picket line between those two points.

The demonstration remained distant gunboat fire and show until around 5 p.m. Hartwell pressed the two New York regiments against Grimball’s Causeway with rush. This pushed in the Confederate skirmishers and might have dislodged the position if continued. Having gained the outer rifle pits, however, the Federals were content to hold what they had.

Among the casualties on the Confederate side was Manigault himself. Struck near the spine with a wound considered mortal, he lay in the line of rifle pits overtaken by the Federals along with a soldier from the Palmetto Guard who stayed, tending to the officer. Manigault later recalled:

Immediately after, 6 men of the 54th N.Y. (with unmistakable brogue) came up and took the soldier prisoner, and then took me. I was in a moment despoiled of my watch, sword, pistol, and field glass and, shortly after, taken on a blanket to Grimball’s Causeway where Capt. [Gustav] Blau, 54th New York, was in command of our men’s rifle pits, or earthwork, which we had just abandoned.

Manigault survived the wound and the war. Writing in 1902, he recalled the South Carolinians lost seven or eight killed or wounded, with 17 captured. Other sources put the number at 20 killed and 70 wounded. The Federals suffered a like number of casualties.

Manigault, Edward BATTLE UNIT NAME: Manigault's Battalion, South Carolina Artillery SIDE: Confederacy COMPANY: F&S SOLDIER'S RANK IN: Major SOLDIER'S RANK OUT: Major ALTERNATE NAME: FILM NUMBER: M381 ROLL 20 PLAQUE NUMBER: NOTES: none