Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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[668] which they looked upon as a license to do as they pleased, were parading the streets in groups. The reign of terrour did not fairly begin till night. In some instances, where parties complained of the misrule and robbery, Federal soldiers said to them, with a chuckle: “This is nothing. Wait till to-night, and you'll see h-11.”

In the town of Columbia was a Catholic convent, the Lady Superiour of which had educated Gen. Sherman's daughter, and now laid claim to his protection for the young women in her charge. A guard of eight or ten men were detailed for the institution. But a Catholic officer in Sherman's army visited the convent, warned the Lady Superiour of danger, and whispered to her, “I must tell you, my sister, Columbia is a doomed city.”

A few moments later, while Mayor Goodwyn was conversing with a Federal soldier, three rockets were shot up by the enemy from the capitol square. As the soldier beheld these rockets, he cried out: “Alas! alas! for your poor city! It is doomed. Those rockets are the signal. The town is to be fired.” In less than twenty minutes after, the flames broke out in twenty distinct quarters.

Engines and hose were brought out by the firemen, but these were soon driven from their labours — which were indeed idle against such a storm of fire-by the pertinacious hostility of the soldiers; the hose was hewn to pieces, and the firemen, dreading worse usage to themselves, left the field in despair. Meanwhile, the flames spread from side to side, from front to rear, from street to street. All the thoroughfares were quickly crowded with helpless women and children, some in their night-clothes. Agonized mothers, seeking their children, all affrighted and terrified, were rushing on all sides from the raging flames and falling houses. Invalids had to be dragged from their beds, and lay exposed to the flames and smoke that swept the streets, or to the cold of the open air in back yards.

The scene at the convent was a sad one. The flames were fast encompassing the convent, and the sisters, and about sixty terrified young ladies, huddled together on the streets. Some Christian people formed a guard around this agonized group of ladies, and conducted them to Sidney Park. Here they fancied to find security, as but few houses occupied the neighbourhood, and these not sufficiently high to lead to apprehension from the flames. But fire-balls were thrown from the heights into the deepest hollows of the park, and the wretched fugitives were forced to scatter, finding their way to other places of retreat, and finding none of them secure. Group after group, stream after stream of fugitives thus pursued their way through the paths of flaming and howling horrour, only too glad to fling themselves on the open ground, whither, in some cases, they had succeeded in conveying a feather-bed or mattress. The malls, or open squares, the centres of the wide streets, were thus strewn with piles of bed.