The Invincible Twelfth

At a regimental reunion in 1880, former Confederate Brigadier General Samuel McGowan lauded the 12th South Carolina Infantry as “The finest of that immortal army,” “foremost in the charge,” and “the invincible Twelfth.” The 12th regiment was part of McGowan’s Brigade 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 The Invincible Twelfth: The 12th South Carolina Infantry of the Gregg-McGowan Brigade, Army of Northern Virginia, that volume has finally arrived.

The field career of the regiment kicked off with an embarrassing defeat in its first engagement on the South Carolina coast in 1861 at Port Royal Sound. The demoralizing event could have set the regiment on a path of self-fulfilling failure and disaster, but a change in colonels from a perpetually absent political appointee to a scrappy legislator born and bred in the upcountry turned the tide. Dixon Barnes instilled discipline and strong leadership in the unit and began a transformational process that turned the raw recruits into some of the Confederacy’s most reliable 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 fought in nearly every major engagement of the war in the Eastern Theater. The 12th earned a high reputation within the army for drill and discipline, and was well known for its impetuous, devastating, and sometimes reckless attacks and counterattacks. That penchant for taking the fight to the enemy came at a bloody price. By the end of the war, only 149 of the nearly 1,400 men who served in the ranks of the regiment surrendered at Appomattox Court House.

Author Cwayna based his study on fifteen years of diligent research, mining every available primary source for information to painstakingly construct the 12th South Carolina Volunteer Infantry’s history from its formation in 1861 until its last official reunion in the 1880s and beyond. Through the words of its soldiers and officers, the stories of long and arduous marches, lack of food, horrendous and unimaginable carnage in battle, and a singular focus on continuing the struggle to gain independence at any cost and under innumerable odds takes shape. The Invincible Twelfth is the story of a remarkable regiment which has long deserved to have its story told.