August 2, 1864: General Birney heading to Virginia with his brigade

At the beginning of August 1864, Major-General John Foster’s Department of the South was shrinking.  Not in area, but rather in terms of manpower.  At the start of July, Foster called upon substantial manpower – more than perhaps the War Department wanted in the theater – to launch a series of demonstrations.  With the equivalent

Defending Port Royal Sound: Garrisons at Hilton Head, Beaufort, Fort Pulaski, and St. Helena Island

As Major-General Quincy Gillmore departed the Department of the South in late April 1864, he left behind an assessment of the garrisons along the coast addressed to Brigadier-General John Hatch, his replacement.  In that assessment, Gillmore included a paragraph describing the needs to defend the vital anchorage at Port Royal Sound: The district around Port