The Invincible Twelfth

At a regimental reunion in 1880, former Confederate Brig. Gen. Samuel McGowan lauded the 12th South Carolina as “The finest of that immortal army,” “foremost in the charge,” and “the invincible Twelfth.” The regiment, along with four others, served under McGowan from early 1863 through the end of the war. The aging brigadier, wounded four times in combat, was an authority on the regiment’s reputation. “It would be impossible on an occasion of this kind, to give anything like a history of the Twelfth Regiment, or tell half of its gallant deeds. That,” he declared, “would require a volume.” With Benjamin L. Cwayna’s new The Invincible Twelfth: The 12th South Carolina Infantry of the Gregg-McGowan Brigade, Army of Northern Virginia, that volume has finally arrived.
The regiment’s career commenced with an ignominious defeat in its initial engagement on the South Carolina coast at Port Royal Sound in 1861. This demoralizing event could have set the regiment on a trajectory of self-fulfilling failure and catastrophe. A change in leadership from a perpetually absent political appointee to a tenacious legislator born and bred in the upcountry, however, altered its course. Dixon Barnes instilled discipline and robust leadership in the unit, initiating a transformational process that molded the raw recruits into some of the Confederacy’s most dependable soldiers.
The 12th was transferred to what would become Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and was brigaded with four other regiments from the Palmetto State. Together, they participated in nearly every major engagement of the war in the Eastern Theater. The 12th earned a sterling reputation within the army for its drill and discipline and was renowned for its impetuous, devastating, and occasionally reckless attacks and counterattacks. This proclivity for taking the fight to the enemy exacted a heavy toll. By war’s end, only about 150 of the nearly 1,400 men who served in the regiment’s ranks surrendered at Appomattox Court House.
Cwayna based his study on years of research, exhaustively mining primary sources to reconstruct the 12th South Carolina’s history from its formation in 1861 until its final official reunion in the 1880s and beyond. Through the words of its soldiers and officers, the narrative of protracted and arduous marches, scarcity of provisions, horrific and unimaginable carnage in battle, and an unwavering determination to persevere in the bitter struggle for independence at any cost and against insurmountable odds takes form. The Invincible Twelfth is the story of a remarkable regiment that has long merited having its tale told.