Six Miles from Charleston, Five Minutes to Hell

A comprehensive account of this bitterly fought yet unjustly forgotten early conflict of the Civil War.

The small, curiously named village of Secessionville, just outside of Charleston, South Carolina was the site of an early war skirmish, the consequences of which might have been enormous had the outcome been different. But the Confederate victory was quickly overshadowed by the Seven Days battles, fought shortly afterward and far to the north.

The Battle of Secessionville was as bloody and hard fought as any similar sized encounter during the war. But it was poorly planned and poorly led by the Union commanders whose behavior did not do justice to the courage of their men.

In Six Miles from Charleston, Five Minutes to Hell, historian Jim Morgan examines the lead up to the conflict, the skirmish itself on June 16, 1862, and its aftermath. By including several original sources not previously explored, he takes a fresh look at this small, but potentially game-changing fight, and shows that it was of much more than merely local interest at the time.