Combat· American Civil War
Dawho River skirmish
A minor combined action in the country around Charleston during the siege.
In late May 1864 a detachment of about thirty Marines, with two light howitzers, took part in an expedition up the Ashepoo and South Edisto Rivers in South Carolina, of which the brush with Confederate troops on the Dawho, a branch of the South Edisto, was a part. The Marines and their guns supported the operation against the enemy positions and stores along the waterways, in the same pattern of riverine raiding that filled the squadron's days off Charleston. The skirmish was small and inconclusive, and no casualties are recorded. It was one of countless such low-level actions by which the blockading force probed the rivers and creeks behind the Charleston defenses, harassing the Confederates and contesting their use of the inland waters without bringing on any major engagement.
Podcast episodes on American Civil War
Record no. 426