Cwayna, Benjamin L. The Invincible Twelfth

The 12th South Carolina Infantry of the Gregg-McGowan Brigade, Army of Northern Virginia

At a regimental festival in 1880, former Confederate Brigadier General Samuel McGowan praised the 12th South Carolina Infantry as the best of this immortal army, first in battle, and the invincible Twelfth. The 12th Regiment belonged to McGowan's brigade from early 1863 until the end of the war. The ageing brigadier general, who had been wounded four times in battle, was an authority on the regiment's reputation. "It would be impossible on an occasion such as this to tell the history of the Twelfth Regiment or even to recount half of its brave deeds. That, he declared, would require an entire book." With Benjamin L. Cwayna's book, that volume has now been published. The regiment's field career began in 1861 with an embarrassing defeat in its first action on the South Carolina coast at Port Royal Sound. This demoralising event could have led the regiment down a path of self-destructive failure and ruin, but a change of colonel from a perpetually absent political appointee to a rough-and-ready legislator born and raised in the backwoods turned the tide. Dixon Barnes introduced discipline and strong leadership to the unit and initiated a transformation process that turned the inexperienced recruits into some of the most reliable soldiers in the Confederacy. The 12th Regiment was transferred to Robert E. Lee's future Army of Northern Virginia and combined with four other regiments from the Palmetto State to form a brigade. Together, they fought in nearly every major battle of the war in the Eastern theatre. The 12th Regiment earned a reputation for discipline within the army and became known for its fierce, devastating and sometimes reckless attacks and counterattacks. This tendency to take the fight to the enemy came at a bloody price. At the end of the war, only 149 of the nearly 1,400 men who had served in the regiment's ranks surrendered at Appomattox Court House. Author Cwayna based his study on fifteen years of meticulous research, combing through all available primary sources for information to painstakingly reconstruct the history of the 12th South Carolina Volunteer Infantry from its formation in 1861 to its final official reunification in the 1880s and beyond. Through the words of its soldiers and officers, the stories of long and arduous marches, food shortages, horrific and unimaginable carnage in battle, and a unique focus on continuing the fight for independence at any cost and against countless odds take shape.