Civil War weapons recovered from South Carolina river

This article is from Military History Matters issue 138

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Hundreds of relics from the American Civil War have been recovered from the Congaree River in Columbia, South Carolina.

The artefacts, which included some live ordnance, were removed during an extensive clean-up operation of the river which concluded last autumn.

Columbia, the South Carolina state capital, was occupied by the Union Army under General William Tecumseh Sherman in February 1865, during the final stages of the Civil War.

Following the city’s surrender, much of Columbia was plundered and burned to the ground, during which the Union army ordered the dumping of Confederate munitions in the river. This included around a million ball cartridges and more than 26,000 pounds of gunpowder.

Artefacts from the American Civil War that were recently recovered from Congaree River. They were dumped by Union soldiers during the 1865 capture of Columbia, South Carolina. Image: Wikimedia Commons

Archaeologists have long known about the river’s secrets but did not get the chance to recover the artefacts until recently, during Dominion Energy’s $20 million project to clean the Congaree River of coal tar, dumped there by a now-closed gas-manufacturing plant.

Among the finds were 10-inch artillery shells, canister shots, a sword blade, and one piece of unexploded ordnance, which had to be dealt with at nearby Shaw Air Force Base.

Also found were Native American arrowheads and modern items such as car parts, while a wooden wheel – believed to have belonged to a wagon that blew up during one of the Civil War munition dumps – was uncovered as well. This find was described as ‘crazy’ by archaeological programme manager Sean Norris, who worked on the clean-up operation.

‘It’s pretty powerful when the history that you read about, you hear about, suddenly comes into reality, and you can hold it in your hand,’ Norris said.

Civil War relics have been discovered in South Carolina before. In 2016, Hurricane Matthew unearthed cannonballs from the conflict from the sand on Folly Beach.

Meanwhile, 19 cannon were found in ‘amazing’ condition in the Savannah River in neighbouring Georgia in 2022, as MHM reported at the time. In 2015, the wreck of the Confederate warship CSS Georgia was also raised from the Savannah.

The Congaree finds are expected to go on show at the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum in Columbia.