Alfred Roman, The military operations of General Beauregard in the war between the states, 1861 to 1865

Chapter 46:

• General Sherman's preconceived determination to have Columbia burned.
-- his denial. -- his despatch to General Halleck, showing his Intent. -- Contradictions contained in his Hartford speech. -- General Hampton's advice not to burn the cotton in Columbia. -- General Beauregard of the same opinion. -- orders to that effect issued on the 16th of February. -- statement of Generals Beauregard, Hampton, and Butler. -- surrender of the City. -- how it was pillaged. -- Signal thrown up at 8 P. M. -- Outbreak of the fire. -- vain efforts by the citizens to arrest its progress. -- General Sherman's Connivance in the plan. -- testimony of General Howard. -- admission by General Sherman that his troops burned Columbia. -- the City destroyed. -- orders of General Sherman in the morning to arrest the fire and pillage. -- letters of General Wade Hampton.

‘But should I be forced to resort to assault, or to the slower and surer process of starvation, I shall then feel justified in resorting to the harshest measures, and shall make little effort to restrain my army, burning to avenge a great national wrong they attach to Savannah and other large cities which have been so prominent in dragging our country into civil war.’¹

It will give additional significance to this utterance, and show that it was not written in Vain, if the reader will note the following passage from Major-General Halleck's despatch to General Sherman, bearing date of Washington, December 18th, 1864— the day after the demand made for the surrender of Savannah: ‘Should you capture Charleston, I hope that by some accident’— [the word ‘some’ is italicized by General Halleck himself]—‘the place may be destroyed; and if a little salt should be sown upon its [366] site, it may prevent the growth of future crops of nullifcation and secession.’ ²

General Sherman says, in his Memoirs, while speaking of the burning of Columbia: ‘Many of the people think this fire was deliberately planned and executed. This is not true.’ Despite irrefutable evidence staring him in the face, he denies the part taken by his army in the work justly asserted to have been done by it. But on the 24th of December, 1864, he sent the following answer to Major-General Halleck's official despatch of December 18th, 1864: ‘I will bear in mind your hint as to Charleston, and don't think “salt” will be necessary. When I move, the 15th Corps will be on the right of the right wing, and their position will bring them naturally into Charleston first; and if you have watched the history of that corps, you will have remarked that they generally do their work up pretty well. The truth is the whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance upon South Carolina. I almost tremble at her fate, but feel that she deserves all that seems in store for her. * * * I look upon Columbia as quite as bad as Charleston.’ ³

Thus, General Sherman agreed with General Halleck in the barbarous programme, and promised its thorough execution. This furnishes unequivocal proof of ‘malice aforethought’ and premeditated incendiarism.

The fate of the towns, villages, and hamlets lying in the track of General Sherman's army in South Carolina shows the sincerity of his expressions. Hardeeville, Grahamville, McPhersonville, Barnwell, Blackville, Midway, Orangeburg, and Lexington, situated between the border of Georgia and the City of Columbia, were given to the flames, and a like doom was reserved for the capital of the State. The torch was mercilessly applied to buildings, public and private, for hundreds of miles on the route of the invading army. Gross indignities were perpetrated on the persons of inoffensive inhabitants. Agricultural implements were wantonly destroyed; dwellings, mills, barns were pillaged and pitilessly reduced to ashes; horses, mules, cattle, goats, and donkeys, [367] not carried away, were killed. Provisions of all kinds were loaded on interminable trains of wagons, and what could not be thus taken was ruthlessly destroyed. For, as General Sherman openly said, in his address at Salem, Ill., ‘We were determined to produce results * * * to make every man, woman, and child in the South feel that if they dared to rebel against the flag of their country, they must die or submit.’ This is in striking contrast with his Hartford speech of June 8th, 1881, in which he says: ‘These orders were purposely most merciful, because I have not but most kindly feelings towards South Carolina, by reason of old associates and friends made before the war, some of whom were known to be in Columbia, and to whom I extended, personally and officially, every possible assistance.’

The facts of the case are these: On the 16th of February, the day on which Lieutenant-General Hampton received official news of his promotion, and was regularly assigned to the command of all the cavalry operating around Columbia, he gave it as his opinion, in a conference with General Beauregard, that, as the enemy was destroying cotton wherever he could find it on his march through South Carolina, it would be not only useless but, perhaps, dangerous to burn the cotton-bales, which, for want of time and a better place to put them, had been piled in the wide streets of Columbia. The reason then given by General Hampton was, that by burning the cotton, as was originally intended, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the enemy, we might set fire to neighboring buildings, and eventually endanger the whole city. As General Beauregard was aware that, owing to the destruction of the South Carolina Railroad by the enemy, the cotton then in Columbia could not be removed from its limits, he readily adopted General Hampton's suggestion, and, through the latter, issued at once explicit orders to that effect. Captain Rawlins Lowndes, General Hampton's adjutant at the time, was the officer who published and signed the orders we refer to, and saw to their prompt and faithful distribution among the troops.

This is corroborated by Generals Beauregard, Hampton, and Butler; by Colonel Otey; by Captain Lowndes; by Lieutenant Chisolm; by the various brigade and regiment commanders on duty that day; in fact, by every officer and private belonging to the Confederate forces then assembled in and around the [368] threatened city, which General Sherman had declared to be ‘quite as bad as Charleston,’ and therefore, in his opinion, doomed.

To give additional strength to this statement and present it in its proper light, we add the following statement of Generals Beauregard, Hampton, and Butler, fully supported by the officers whose names have been already mentioned—not to speak of hundreds of honorable citizens of Columbia, conspicuous among whom were Dr. Goodwyn, its respected Mayor, and the Rev. Doctors A. Toomer Porter and P. J. Shand—to wit:

‘That when, between 9 and 10 o'clock A. M. on the 17th, General Butler's last trooper rode out of the capital of South Carolina, just as the vanguard of the Federal army was entering it, not one bale of the cotton piled in its streets had been set afire. The only thing burning at the time of the evacuation was the depot of the South Carolina Railroad, situated on the distant outskirts of the city—too far to have communicated the fire to any other building, and which, for want of material, very soon burned itself out.’

This silences all contradiction, for this is simply the truth.

It remains none the less a fact, however, that Columbia was destroyed by fire. When was it so destroyed, and by whom?

Between 8 and 9 o'clock A. M., on the 17th, Dr. Goodwyn, the Mayor, and three Aldermen, whose names we are unable to give, formally surrendered the city to the first officer of the hostile army whom they met, and were ‘promised protection to the town and its inhabitants until communication could be had with General Sherman.’⁴ At 11 o'clock A. M. Columbia was in the possession of the Federal forces. The first detachment that entered it formed part of the command of the officer (Colonel Stone) to whom the surrender was made, and belonged to the 15th Corps, of whose work General Sherman had exultingly spoken in his despatch to General Halleck, already given.

No sooner had the Federals entered the city than universal pillage began. Stores and private buildings were indiscriminately sacked, and neither check nor restraint was put upon the soldiery by their officers. At about 2 P. M. General Sherman rode in. He also promised protection to the city, as Colonel Stone had previously done. Meanwhile, and, in fact, hours before General Sherman's appearance, open and undisguised warnings were given the inhabitants of the fate awaiting them. Some were cautioned [369] to leave immediately, as, before the next morning, everything around them would be reduced to ashes.⁵ The signal at which the conflagration was to begin—three rockets, to be fired, at about eight o'clock, in front of the Mayor's residence—was also spoken of and distinctly described, at times with jeers and threats, occasionally with an appearance of compassion for the unfortunate inhabitants. At the appointed hour these rockets shot upwards, attracting the attention of the whole city, and shortly afterwards the troops scattered down the streets; suddenly fires broke out in every direction, at points distant from each other, and the flames spread on all sides. Citizens, with their fire-companies, at first rushed to the burning houses, attempting, as best they could, to save them from destruction; but they were unable to effect any good, not only on account of the extent of the conflagration, but because the Federals, wild with joy at the bonfires they had lighted, pierced the hose and disabled the engines.⁶

Before morning, on the 18th, the greater portion of the city was a heap of smouldering ashes. Most of its inhabitants—old men, women, and children—passed that winter night unsheltered from wind and cold. And General Sherman rode through the streets that night and looked on.

That General Sherman did not issue direct and open orders for the destruction of Columbia we are willing to admit; but that he knew what work would be accomplished by his army, ‘burning with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance upon South Carolina;’ that he countenanced the vandalism of his troops, is undeniable. Otherwise, not only would there have been no ambiguity about the order to burn, but a positive order not to burn would have been issued. Invading columns, such especially as composed the notorious 15th Federal Corps, require no prompting to be aware that, in military discipline as well as in law, what is not prohibited is allowed.

Among the witnesses summoned—so to say—by General Sherman in support of his allegation that the Confederate cavalry, and not his troops, caused the destruction of the capital of South Carolina, is General O. O. Howard, who commanded the right wing [370] of the Federal army at that time. General Sherman in his Hartford speech said: ‘Mr. Davis was not in Columbia during that fire, nor was General Hampton. I was, and so was General 0. 0. Howard * * * and fourteen thousand honest, good, true Union soldiers. * * * The fire in Columbia, on the night of February 17th, 1865, in my judgment, then and now, was caused by particles of burning cotton. * * * The cotton was unquestionably set fire to by the Confederate cavalry,’ etc. General Sherman is unfortunate in the selection of his witness, for we have it from the Rev. P. J. Shand, who was in Columbia at the time of its destruction, and saw and personally felt the effects of the ruthlessness of the enemy, that, in November, 1865, upon his visiting General Howard, at his headquarters in Charleston, on matters of business, the latter stated to him, in the presence of a friend, that ‘though General Sherman did not order the burning of the town, yet, somehow or other, the men had taken up the idea that if they destroyed the capital of South Carolina it would be peculiarly gratifying to General Sherman.’⁷ And upon another occasion, two years later, in the presence of the Hon. James L. Orr, then Governor of South Carolina, afterwards United States Minister to Russia, and of General John S. Preston, also of South Carolina, General Howard distinctly stated to General Hampton, referring to the burning of Columbia, that ‘no one was authorized to say that the Federal troops did not burn Columbia, as he saw them doing so in numerous instances, and in various localities of the town.’⁸ But, what is still more striking, is the fact that General Sherman himself admitted that the burning of Columbia was the act of his own troops, though he endeavored to screen them from odium by declaring them mad and irresponsible from the effects of liquor. To the Rev. A. Toomer Porter, ‘in the bright light of the burning city,’ and on the day following to Doctor Goodwyn, he said that, owing to the indiscretion of their Governor and Mayor, who had allowed hundreds of casks of whiskey to be left in the evacuated city, his men had got so drunk as to be entirely beyond his control. Pointing to the ruins surrounding him, he remarked, ‘And this is the result.’ ‘There was no [371] allusion made to General Hampton, to accident, or to cotton,’ says Doctor Goodwyn.⁹ That allusion was an after-thought, prompted, as General Sherman himself admits, by his desire ‘to shake the faith of his [General Hampton's] people in him, for he was, in my opinion, boastful, and professed to be the special champion of South Carolina.’¹⁰

But the unconscious admission of General Sherman that Columbia was destroyed by the Federal troops is not confined to what has just been stated. In his ‘Memoirs’ (vol. II., p. 349), alluding to the death of Mr. Lincoln, of which he apprised General Johnston in his first interview with the latter, on the 17th of April, 1865, he says: ‘Mr. Lincoln was peculiarly endeared to the soldiers, and I feared that some foolish woman or man in Raleigh might say something or do something that would madden our men, and that a fate worse than that of Columbia would befall the place.’ This is significant, and shows conclusively: that it was the men of the Federal army who burned Columbia. ‘Madden’ the same men in Raleigh, and Raleigh will suffer a like fate to that of Columbia. This is clearly the meaning of General Sherman's words.

When, to ‘gratify’ their Commander-in-chief, the men of the 15th Federal Corps, who ‘generally did their work up pretty well,’ had wreaked vengeance all night upon the defenseless people now in their power, General Sherman, satiated at last with what he himself termed ‘a horrible sight,’¹¹ issued peremptory orders to turn out the guard and stop the burning and pillage then going on. In spite of the alleged drunkenness of the Federal forces, which has been denied by many a credible witness, so good was their discipline, so complete the control of their officers—and so obedient these to General Sherman—that scarcely an hour and a half had elapsed after his orders were given before quiet reigned throughout the city.

When, in General Sherman's opinion, it became time to put an end to what Mr. Whitelaw Reid has called ‘the most monstrous barbarity of that barbarous march ;’¹² when he thought that even [372] the capital of South Carolina had been sufficiently scourged, he issued the order, which was immediately and unhesitatingly obeyed. In proof of the stern discipline exacted by the officers of General Sherman's army, it may be stated here that nine Federal soldiers who, in various places, still loitered in the streets and disregarded the order, were, in the presence of many a citizen and by-stander, mercilessly shot dead.

We do not deny that some of the cotton piled in the streets of Columbia was set on fire and actually burned on the 17th of February; but what we assert is, that it was after—hours after— the city had been evacuated by the Confederate troops; and that it was the work of General Sherman's own men. They could not carry the cotton with them or use it; and whether on their march through the streets into which the cotton-bales had been rolled, or while reclining against them during their halts, with lighted cigars and pipes, unintentionally or by design, unquestionably they caused the cotton to ignite. This was easily effected, because the cotton was badly packed, and protruded from the bales in many places. The citizens, unhindered by the soldiery, quickly extinguished this fire. The general conflagration of the buildings, shown to have been the premeditated work of the Federal troops, was, by understanding, begun at dark; and, fanned by a sharp wind blowing from the west, soon reached the cotton, setting it in a blaze, thus increasing the conflagration in that part of the city. The Appendix to this chapter contains the proof of what is here alleged. So does the following letter, written, in 1866, by General Wade Hampton to the Hon. Reverdy Johnson, then a Senator in the United States Congress:

wild woods, Mississippi, April 21st, 1866.
To Hon. Reverdy Johnson, United States Senate:

Sir,—A few days ago I saw in the published proceedings of Congress that a petition from Benjamin Kawles, of Columbia, S. C., asking for compensation for the destruction of his house by the Federal army, in February, 1865, had been presented to the Senate, accompanied by a letter from Major-General Sherman. In this letter General Sherman uses the following language: “The citizens of Columbia set fire to thousands of bales of cotton rolled out in the streets, and which were burning before we entered Columbia. I myself was in the city as early as nine o'clock,¹³ and saw these fires, and knew what efforts were made to [373] extinguish them, but a high and strong wind prevented. I gave no orders for the burning of your city, but, on the contrary, the conflagration resulted from the great imprudence of cutting the cotton-bales, whereby the contents were spread to the wind, so that it became an impossibility to arrest the fire. I saw in your Columbia newspaper the printed order of General Wade Hampton, that on the approach of the Yankee army all the cotton should thus be burned, and, from what I saw myself, I have no hesitation in saying that he was the cause of the destruction of your city.”

This charge, made against me by General Sherman, having been brought before the Senate of the United States, I am naturally most solicitous to vindicate myself before the same tribunal. But my State has no representative in that body. Those who should be her constitutional representatives there are debarred the right to enter into those halls. There are none who have the right to speak for the South; none to participate in the legislation which governs her; none to impose the taxes she is called upon to pay, and none to vindicate her sons from misrepresentation, injustice, or slander.

Under these circumstances I appeal to you, in the confident hope you will use every effort to see that justice is done in this matter.

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 most respectfully ask of Congress to appoint a committee, charged with the duty of ascertaining and reporting all the facts connected with the destruction of Columbia, and thus fixing upon the proper author of that enormous crime the infamy he richly deserves. I am willing to submit the case to any honest tribunal. Before any such I pledge myself to prove that I gave a positive order, by direction of General Beauregard, that no cotton should be fired; that not one bale was on fire when General Sherman's troops took possession of the city; that he promised protection to the city, and that, in spite of his solemn promise, he burned the city to the ground, deliberately, systematically, and atrociously. I therefore most earnestly request that Congress may take prompt and efficient measures to investigate this matter fully. Not only is this due to themselves and to the reputation of the United States army, but also to justice and to truth. Trusting that you will pardon me for troubling you,

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

Wade Hampton.

It is needless to add a word more to show upon whom rests the responsibility for the burning of Columbia. In vain will General [374] Sherman attempt to wipe this stain from his reputation as a military commander. His wisest course would have been to maintain absolute silence concerning all that refers to Columbia, trusting to the effects of time to soften, in the minds of his countrymen, the ignominy of having designedly connived at the destruction of a surrendered and, therefore, defenceless city.