Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 08.djvu/555

Rh but soon retired. Reconnoitering, apparently.

June 2.—A gunboat came up Folly river this morning on the flood about 9 A. M., shelled the battery of Captain Chichester at Legare's Point, that of Captain Warley, close to Secessionville, and Secessionville itself. This place being then occupied by the Eutaw battalion, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles H. Simonton commanding; the Charleston battalion, Lieutenant-Colonel P. C. Gaillard, commanding; the cavalry companies of Captain W. L. Disher, and of Captain————McKeiver, and being the headquarters of Brigadier-General S. R. Gist, commanding on the island. Our batteries responded vigorously. No damage done by the enemy, except to a horse, which had his leg broken by a shell that passed through an outhouse just behind the general's headquarters and exploded. After firing for about an hour the enemy withdrew. No damage up to this time done by the enemy's firing, except to horses.

Evening.—More than twenty vessels in sight off Charleston bar and Stono inlet and in Stono river. Enemy reported as being on James' Island, at the point nearest Battery Island, and as having driven in our pickets.

Captain Carlos Tracy, volunteer aid to General Gist, and Lieutenant Winter, Wassamassaw cavalry, fired on while reconnoitering their position. General Gist and Captain Tracy repeatedly fired on same evening by enemy's advance guard. This firing the first news in camp of enemy's landing.

June 3.—Last night the enemy and a small party of our men lay near each other all night, at Legare's. Captain Chichester's guns, in being withdrawn from Legare's point during the night, stuck in the mud. Men engaged in endeavoring to extricate them driven off by the enemy near morning. Lieutenant-Colonel Ellison Capers, Twenty-fourth regiment South Carolina Volunteers, with several companies, sent just after daylight to bring off the guns and to ascertain enemy's position. Sharp skirmish with the enemy at Legare's, in which Lieutenant-Colonel Capers drove back for a half mile or more, the enemy's troops in his front, though very much outnumbering him; took twenty-three prisoners, and retired only on the appearance of the enemy in heavy force on the field, supported by a cross fire from gunboats in the Stono and in Folly river. Enemy engaged, said to have been Twenty-eighth Massachusetts and One-hundredth Pennsylania volunteers. Our loss, several wounded, and one taken prisoner. Lieutenant Walker, adjutant Charleston battalion, wounded in the leg, in an endeavor to bring off whom, it was said, private Bresnan, Irish volunteers, was