...olumbia, not with a malicious intent, or as the manifestation of a Roman stoicism, but from folly and want of sense in filling it with lint, cotton and tinder. I have thus given in his own words General Sherman 's three statements of his version of the story of Columbia's burning. They show a toning down as we come on from 1865 to 1873, and finally to 1875; but this discrepancy is not the matter before me ...