According to his daughter’s application to join the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Lemuel Edwards “participated in three battles.”
Those battles were the battles of Griswoldville, Honey Hill, and Savannah.
In the summer of 2016, I obtained permission from the town of Ridgeland, South Carolina, to explore the breastworks located in the snake-infested woods off Highway 336. The town had recently purchased the property, and had plans to preserve the nearly untouched breastworks.
Relic hunters had surreptitiously visited the site for years, but warnings among the metal detecting community were quite strong that this was private property, and the owner did not brook trespassing. These works therefore, have remained almost untouched since the battle, and although built more than one and a half centuries ago, the works are still quite formidable.
Joseph Derry wrote of these breastworks and the battle of Honey Hill in his Story of the Confederate States. He wrote, “A remarkable feature of this battle was the presence among the Confederates of some boy volunteers, even under the age subject to conscription. Soldiers who were present in that battle say that some of the boys were not tall enough to shoot over the parapet. So they resorted to the following device: A boy would get on his hands and knees, another would stand on his back, deliver his fire, and then change places with his friend, so that he might get a shot at the ‘Yanks’”
Here is some footage from that battlefield.
Here is an interesting article regarding the battlefield preservation.
Here’s a map of the battlefield.
Here is a good summary of the battle.
The pictures below would have been the North and East views for a Confederate soldier.
