In the spring and summer of 1864, Union officers of the Department of the South on Hilton Head Island grew concerned about having enough troops and equipment to defend Hilton Head as units were transferred to campaigns elsewhere, especially in Virginia and Georgia, where General William Tecumseh Sherman’s army had attacked Atlanta. Fearing Confederate raids or more serious attacks on the island, particularly against the new freedman’s village of Mitchelville, Major General John G. Foster ordered Captain Charles R. Suter, Chief of Engineers in the Department of the South, to build an earthwork fort to defend Mitchelville and Hilton Head. The pentagonal earthwork was designed to defend the two main approaches to Mitchelville from the southwest and southeast. Fort Howell saw no action and was abandoned at war’s end. It is one of the best preserved Civil War earthen forts in South Carolina, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2011, and was designated a National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom site by the National Park Service in 2013.