Booknotes: The Invincible Twelfth

New Arrival:

• The Invincible Twelfth: The 12th South Carolina Infantry of the Gregg-McGowan Brigade, Army of Northern Virginia by Benjamin L. Cwayna (Savas Beatie, 2025).

July has been a desert month for new releases so far, with only one arrival over the past three weeks. Happily, though, three new titles landed in the mail box yesterday.

First up is a fresh South Carolina regimental history. To the best of my knowledge, when Tom Broadfoot retired and sold off all of his remaining stock to a third party, that spelled the end of the South Carolina Regimental-Roster Set series or any other new titles under the Broadfoot Publishing Company name. The website is still up, though, and what appears to be the final list of series titles indicates that they never did get to the 12th South Carolina before folding. Fortunately for those interested in that particular regiment, Benjamin Cwayna has come through with a fine-looking regimental history titled The Invincible Twelfth: The 12th South Carolina Infantry of the Gregg-McGowan Brigade, Army of Northern Virginia.

Some green regiments, such as the famous Fire Zouaves of New York, were unable to recover from a disastrous introduction to Civil War combat. Others used that experience for future motivation, while perhaps also benefiting from new leadership. The 12th was a shining example of a regiment that recovered from catastrophic beginnings and went on to forge an enviable combat record. From the description: "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."

As was the case with many other newly organized regiments from the two Carolinas, the 12th began its field service in the coastal defense role. However, it quickly blossomed into one of the Confederacy's best fighting regiments upon attachment to the Army of Northern Virginia. More from the description: "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." Such headstrong valor came at an immense cost, though, and "(b)y war’s end, only about 150 of the nearly 1,400 men who served in the regiment’s ranks surrendered at Appomattox Court House."

The author self-describes his writing on the 12th as "strictly military history in its purest form," emphasis being on "the tactical minutiae of the regiment's actions in camp, in battles, and on the march" (pg. xii). In support of Cwayna's narrative, which is based 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," are 14 original maps.