The Combahee Raid
Introduction
The Combahee Raid, and the heroic actions of Harriet Tubman, though not widely known, are one of the boldest and most successful military operations in American history. This exhibit will tell the stories around this extraordinary event: the preparation, the raid, and the people, and follow them to the present.
Please support this exhibit by making a tax deductible donation on our donation page.
So many thanks to The Coastal Community Foundation for acting as fiscal sponsors on this project!
The Raid
A tremendous amount of planning and advance work went in to this foray.
Three unwieldly ships were provisioned with the necessary arms, soldiers, fuel, and lights and navigated from Beaufort to arrive at the mouth of the Combahee River at the beginning of the flooding tide, under the moonlight.
The River
The Combahee is a shallow, winding, shoaly river which is difficult to navigate with a modern maneuverable boat, much less a paddle-wheel steamer. This crew came into the river in the night, at low tide, as the flooding tide began. Modern navigation charts show that the channel sometimes hugs the river banks, other times runs in the middle of the river.
When the people arrived from Africa, the river was lined largely with cypress swamps, and populated by predators and poisonous creatures. It was all bested by hand, doubtless with great loss of life.
The low land through which the river meandered meant that the river was tidal, and thus brackish (mixture of salt and sweet). Due to the different specific gravity of fresh and salt water, the rising tide of salt water actually went below and lifted the layer of fresh water flowing down the river, the essential magic that enabled the flood agriculture system needed for growing rice in this soil.
The Woman
Harriet Tubman is a super human by any measure.
It is hard to imagine what circumstances could compel an individual to her level of will and determination.
This operation, which freed 750 enslaved people was only a continuation of her previous work.
She is a universal inspiration to people that cherish freedom and equality, and has inspired countless artists over the years.
Rice and Slavery
At the time of the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, Rice was the most valuable commodity in the world, making Charleston and the low country the richest area in the world, and it all depended on the free labor of slavery.
Apocryphal Legend has it that rice journeyed to Charleston in 1685 on a ship from Madagascar. The ship, possibly blown off course by a hurricane, landed in Charleston Harbor, and the captain bestowed upon a lucky Charlestonian a bag of seeds. Regardless of how it arrived in Charleston, within just a few years, rice was the region’s major cash crop.
Many of the enslaved Africans were from West Africa, particularly near the Gambia River estuary where rice was grown with a similar tidal flooding technique as was used in the low country, and thus the skill and knowledge could have originated with them.
What is certain is that these men and women changed this landscape, with bare hands, from cypress swamps to the tidal wetlands that remain today.
The Plantation
The rice plantations were large plots of land, usually owned in abstentia, with precise specifications. The rice fields were created in essentially level areas that could be made exactly level (again, by hand) with a controllable supply of water that could be used to flood the crop at specific times in the growth cycle of the rice.
Though there were many inland rice fields which were flooded with water from other sources (streams and reservoirs), fresh water flooding from the river was the most reliable, and productive method. This system necessitated that the fields be between the “salt point” (downstream, where the river was largely salt water) and before the upriver point at which the tide ceased to raise the river level.
The People
The people freed in the Combahee Raid were taken to Beaufort, the origin of the expidition and the Union Army Base in the region. There they were celebrated with a parade down the main street, and many of the able-bodied men enlisted with the Union Army.
Eventually they were processed, and sent to various settlement sites in the area. The descendants live there today, shaping the land, creating the culture.
This region, at the time remote, has seen a population explosion in the last years and thus tremendous increases in property value, which, combined with the often imprecise chain of title, or heirs title situations, have led to a steady disenfranchisement of some of these descendants.
