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[461]
for the protection of persons and property.
The wind was then blowing a gale.
Citizens and soldiers were upon the streets, and general good order prevailed.
Sherman had ratified the promise of protection given by Stone.
“It will become my duty,” he observed, substantially, “to destroy some of the Government or public buildings, but I will reserve this performance to another day. It shall be done to-morrow, provided the day be calm.”
1
That promise was faithfully kept, and had Wade Hampton, the commander of the rear-guard of the Confederates, who lingered in the town until ten o'clock that morning, been as careful of the interests of the citizens.
as the Union troops, all would have been well.
But he ordered all the cotton in the city, public and private, to be taken into the streets and burned, to, prevent its falling into the hands of the Nationals.
When Sherman entered the town, the cotton was in the streets.
The cords and bagging of the bales, had been cut, and the white wool in tufts was flying about the city in the gale, like snow, lodging in the trees and on the sides and roofs of houses.
Notwithstanding the high wind, some of the bales, especially a pile of them in the heart of the city, near the court-house, were already on fire when Sherman entered.2 His troops, by great exertions, partially subdued the flames.3 They broke out again, with greater intensity, that night; and the, beautiful capital of South Carolina--the destined seat of Government of the prospective independent “Confederate States of America” --was laid in ruins in the course of a few hours.
Among the public buildings then destroyed, was the old State House, delineated on page 46 of volume I. Hampton, the real author of the conflagration, afterward charged it upon Sherman — a charge which Beauregard, ever ready to “fire the Southern heart” with the relation of “Yankee atrocities,” did not make at the time, and which Pollard, the Confederate historian of the war, did not make afterward, except by implication, when he wrote that Sherman, “After having completed, as far as possible, the destruction of Columbia, continued his march northward.”
4
1 Sack and Destruction of the City of Columbia, page 18.
2 The Fifteenth Corps passed through the city in the course of the day, and went out on the Camden road. The Seventeenth did not enter the town; and the left wing was not within two miles of it at any time.
3 See General Sherman's Report, April 4, 1865.
4 General Sherman, in his Report, dated April 4, 1865, says: “Before one single building had been fired by order, the smoldering fires, set by Hampton's order, were rekindled by the wind and communicated to the buildings around. At dark they began to spread, and got beyond the control of the brigade on duty within the city. The whole of Woods's division was brought in, but it was found impossible to check the flames, which, by midnight, had become unmanageable, and raged until about 4 A. M., when, the wind subsiding, they were, got under control. I was up nearly all night, and saw Generals Howard, Logan and Woods, and others, laboring to save houses and protect families thus suddenly deprived of shelter, and of bedding and wearing apparel. I disclaim, on the part of my army, any agency in this fire, but, on the contrary, claim that we saved what of Columbia remains unconsumed. And, without hesitation, I charge General Wade Hampton with having burned his own city of Columbia, not with a malicious intent, or as a manifestation of a silly ‘ Roman stoicism,’ but from folly and want of sense, in filling it with lint, cotton, and tinder. Our officers and men on duty worked well to extinguish the flames; but others not on duty, including the officers, who had long been imprisoned there, rescued by us, may have assisted in spreading the fire after it had once begun, and may have indulged in unconcealed joy to see the ruin of the capital of South Carolina.” 4
The conduct of the Confederate troops, and especially of Wade Hampton, the commander, after the mayor and some of the council had gone out to surrender the city, had exasperated the National soldiers, and according to the laws and usages of war, subjected the city to lawful destruction. According to the author of The Sack and Destruction of the City of Columbia, the mayor and councilmen went out at nine o'clock, when “it was proposed,” he says, “that the white flag should be displayed from the tower of the City Hall. But General Hampton, whose command had not yet left the city, and who was still eager to do battle in its defense, indignantly declared that, if displayed, he should have it torn down.” The author adds: “Hampton's cavalry, as we have already mentioned, lingered till near ten o'clock, and scattered groups of Wheeler's command hovered about the Federal army at their entrance into the town.” It appears by the testimony of this eager witness against the Nationals, who professes to have been an eye-witness of the destruction of Columbia, that the Confederate soldiery, under the direction of Wade Hampton, continued to fight the Nationals in the streets of the city after it had been surrendered by competent authority. That writer gives a terrible picture of the robberies committed by the Union soldiers not on duty. They seem to have followed the example of the Confederates themselves. He tells us of a building, in which valuable property of almost every kind had been stored, that was “broken open by a band of plunderers,” early in the morning, before the arrival of the National troops, and says, “Wheeler's cavalry also shared largely in the plunder, and several of them might be seen bearing off huge bales upon their saddles.” --Page 12.5 Major Nichols, in his Story of the Great March, under date of Feb. 17, 1865 (page 166), says: “Various causes are assigned to explain the origin of the fire. I am quite sure that it originated in sparks, flying from the hundreds of bales of cotton which the Rebels had placed along the middle of the main street, and fired as they left the city. Fire from a tightly compressed bale of cotton is unlike that of a more open material, which burns itself out. The fire lies smoldering in a bale of cotton after it appears to be extinguished, and in this instance, when our soldiers supposed they had extinguished the fire, it suddenly broke out again with the most disastrous effect. There were fires, however, which must have been started independent of the above-named cause. The source of these is ascribed to the desire for revenge from some 200 of our prisoners, who had escaped from the cars as they were being conveyed from this city to Charlotte, and, with the memories of long suffering in the miserable pens I visited yesterday, on the other side of the river, sought this means of retaliation.”
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