Tracing Freedom’s Tide: William Dawson and the Journey from McLeod to Cole Island
By Carmen Conley, October 2025

In September, I made my second visit to McLeod Plantation Historic Site (https://www.ccprc.com/1447/McLeod-Plantation-Historic-Site), just a stone’s throw from my home on James Island. Although I’d toured it before, this time I heard a story I hadn’t encountered—the story of William Dawson, an enslaved man on the Plantation who
in May 1862 led eight others in an extraordinary act of self-emancipation.

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When the guide mentioned that Dawson and his group likely reached Cole Island—the very island and waterways our Foundation works to preserve—it connected familiar places in a new way. For nearly thirty years, my father had shared stories about Cole Island’s role during the Civil War—its alternating occupation by Confederate and Union forces and its strategic position at the mouth of the Stono River. Hearing Dawson’s story tied to that same geography linked the military history I grew up hearing with the human story of freedom
that unfolded alongside it.

A Narrow Window to Freedom
By the spring of 1862, Charleston’s defenses were in transition. Confederate troops were withdrawing from smaller coastal fortifications to reinforce other fronts. Among those vacated was Cole Island, whose batteries had guarded the Stono River’s entrance. Its guns were removed and its garrisons withdrawn, leaving the waterways temporarily less patrolled.

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Just days earlier, Robert Smalls, an enslaved pilot from Charleston, famously had seized the Confederate ship Planter and delivered it to the Union blockade. The night before his daring escape, Smalls and his crew had stopped at Cole Island and observed Confederate troops dismantled the fortifications. When Smalls turned the Planter over to Union forces on May 13, 1862, he informed them that Cole Island had been abandoned—a key piece of intelligence that helped the Union understand the vulnerabilities of the Stono approaches.

It is a reasonable assumption that word of Smalls’ successful escape—an extraordinary feat carried out under the eyes of the Confederate defenses—would have spread quickly among enslaved communities on nearby plantations, including McLeod. His act demonstrated both the possibility of freedom and the navigational routes that made it achievable.

Around May 24–25, 1862, William Dawson and eight others launched their escape from McLeod Plantation, likely by small boat. Their probable route followed McLeod’s wharf, through Wappoo Cut, and into the Stono River, heading toward Cole Island, where Union pickets were beginning to appear. Union naval reports from that same week describe more than 400 enslaved people on James Island attempting to reach Union lines. Dawson’s group was among those who succeeded, amid active “slave patrols”.

From Enslaved to Enlisted
According to military records, William Dawson enlisted in the U.S. Navy on May 25, 1862—the day after his escape. He served two tours and, after the war, became a landowner on James Island, according to Freedman’s Bureau records.

The eight individuals, including an infant, who fled with him appear in McLeod family records only by first name, listed as “runaways” on or about the same date. Beyond that brief mention, little is known of their lives once they presumably reached freedom. Yet their story—undertaken in secrecy and under immense risk—represents one of many acts of self-determination that reshaped the Lowcountry during the war.

Why It Matters to Cole Island
For the Cole Island Foundation, Dawson’s story deepens our understanding of the island’s layered history. During the Civil War, Cole Island shifted between Confederate and Union control, serving as both a defensive position and a staging ground. But for Dawson and his companions, and potentially other enslaved individuals, it likely served as a threshold to freedom.

The same waterways that once carried soldiers and gunboats also carried those who sought liberty through knowledge of the tides and courage to act. Preserving these landscapes allows us to remember both histories—the military and the human—and to reflect on how intertwined they were along the Stono River.

When I stand on the shore of Cole Island today, I see the same creeks that shaped these events more than 160 years ago. The tides still move through those channels, carrying forward the memory of resilience, risk, and renewal.