The Combahee River Raid of 1863

Unsung History

Starting in November 1861, the Union Army held the city of Beaufort, South Carolina, using the Sea Islands as a southern base of operations in the Civil War. Harriet Tubman joined the Army there, debriefing freedom seekers who fled enslavement in nearby regions and ran to seek the Union Army’s protection in Beaufort. With the intelligence Tubman gathered, she and Colonel James Montgomery led 150 Black soldiers on a daring raid along the Combahee RIver in June 1863, destroying seven rice plantations in the heart of the Confederate breadbasket, causing $6 million worth of damages and liberating 756 people from enslavement on the rice fields.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. Edda Fields-Black, Associate Professor of HIstory at Carnegie Mellon University and author of COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is "Dangerous," by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License. The episode image is Mcpherson & Oliver, photographer. “2nd South Carolina Infantry Regiment raid on rice plantation, Combahee, South Carolina,” by Mcpherson and Oliver, published in Harper’s Weekly, July 4, 1863; the image is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress.

Additional Sources:

• “Port Royal, Battle of,” by Stephen R. Wise, Encyclopedia of South Carolina, Originally published June 20, 2016, and updated August 22, 2022.
• “Nov. 7, 1861: The Port Royal Experiment Initiated,” Zinn Education Project.
• “The Port Royal Experiment,” The Lowcountry Digital History Initiative (LDHI).
• “Port Royal Experiment: Reconstruction Era in Beaufort, South Carolina with Park Ranger Chris Barr [video],” National Center for Preservation Technology and Training (NCPTT), August 23, 2022.
• “Life on the Sea Islands (Part I),” by Charlotte Forten Grimké, The Atlantic, May 1864.
• “Life on the Sea Islands (Part II),” by Charlotte Forten Grimké, The Atlantic, June 1864.
• “Harriet Tubman’s Great Raid,” by Paul Donnelly, The New York Times, June 7, 2013.
• “After the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman Led a Brazen Civil War Raid,” by Alexis Clark, History.com, Originally published November 1, 2019, and updated August 29, 2023.

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