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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[669] ding, on which lay exhausted figures, or crouched women and children wild with terrour. Every hour of the night was fraught with scenes of horrour such as we have described. By midnight, every large block in the business portion of the town was consumed. A lady said to an officer at her house, somewhere about four o'clock in the morning: “In the name of God, sir, when is this work of hell to be ended?” He replied: “You will hear the bugles at sunrise, when a guard will enter the town and withdraw these troops. It will then cease, and not before.”

The sun rose with a wan countenance, peering dimly through the dense vapours which seemed wholly to overspread the firmament. The best and most beautiful portion of Columbia lay in ruins. Eighty-four squares of buildings had been destroyed, with scarcely the exception of a single house. The capitol building, six churches, eleven banking establishments, the schools of learning, the shops of art and trade, of invention and manufacture, shrines equally of religion, benevolence, and industry were all buried together in one congregated ruin. Nothing remained but the tall, spectre-looking chimneys. The noble-looking trees that shaded the streets, the flower-gardens that graced them, were blasted and withered by fire. On every side there were ruins and smoking masses of blackened walls, and between, in desolate groups, reclining on mattress, or bed, or earth, were wretched women and children gazing vacantly on the site of what had been their homes. Roving detachments of the soldiers passed around and among them. There were those who looked and lingered nigh, with taunt and sarcasm. Others there were, in whom humanity did not seem wholly extinguished; and others again, to their credit be it said, who were truly sorrowful and sympathizing, who had labored for the safety of family and property, and who openly deplored the dreadful crime.

An attempt has been made to relieve Gen. Sherman of the terrible censure of having deliberately fired and destroyed Columbia, and to ascribe the calamity to accident or to carelessness resulting from an alleged order of Gen. Hampton to burn the cotton in the city. This explanation is a tardy one, and has come only after Gen. Sherman has observed the horrour which this crime has excited in the world, and realized some of its terrible consequences. To the imputation against Gen. Hampton, that chivalrous officer, whose word friend nor foe ever had reason to dispute, has replied in a public letter: “I deny emphatically that any cotton was fired in Columbia by my order. I deny that the citizens ‘set fire to thousands of bales rolled out into the streets.’ I deny that any cotton was on fire when the Federal troops entered the city. ... I pledge myself to prove that I gave a positive order, by direction of Gen. Beauregard, that no cotton should be fired; that not one bale was on fire when Gen. Sherman's troops took possession of the city; that he promised protection to the city, and that, in spite of his ”