Who burned Columbia?--a Review of General Sherman's version of the affair.
The publication of his “Memoirs” by
General Sherman makes for the third time an occasion for the country to ask, Who burned
Columbia?
The first occasion was the publication of his official report just after the event; and the second was in September, 1873, when he published a letter in the
Washington Chronicle, apparently designed to influence the decision of the
Mixed Claims Commission.
In his “Memoirs” just published
General Sherman uses this language concerning the burning of the capital of
South Carolina: “Many of the people think this fire was deliberately planned and executed.
This is not true.
It was accidental, and in my judgment began from the cotton which
General Hampton's men had set fire to on leaving the city (whether by his order or not is not material), which fire was partially subdued early in the day; but when night came the high wind fanned it again into full blaze, carried it against the frame buildings, which caught like tinder, and soon spread beyond our control.”
In his letter to the
Washington Chronicle in 1873
General Sherman says: “I reiterate that, no matter what his (
General Hampton's)
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orders were, the men of his army, either his rear guard or his stragglers, did apply the fire, and that this was a sufficient cause for all else that followed.”
By “all else,” of course,
General Sherman means the destruction of the city.
In his official report of the event itself in 1865
General Sherman says: “And without hesitation I charge
General Wade Hampton with having burned his own city of
Columbia, 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 just now. The general idea of the three statements is that the burning of
Columbia was an accident, and that
General Hampton is responsible for it. I propose to show that the burning of
Columbia was a crime, and that
General Sherman is responsible for it.
First.
On page 287 of volume first of the
Supplemental report of the joint Committee on the conduct of the war, published officially by the
Government, are these words in a dispatch dated December 18, 1864, from
Major-General H. W. Halleck, in
Washington, to
General Sherman, then in
Savannah: “Should you capture
Charleston, I hope that by
some accident the place may be destroyed, and if a little salt should be sown upon its site, it may prevent the growth of future crops of nullification and secession.”
The italicising of the word
some is done by
General Halleck.
Are not the animus and intention of these words perfectly clear?
That they were understood and cordially concurred in by the officer to whom they were addressed is apparent from
General Sherman's reply to them, which, dated December 24, 1864, contains these words: “I will bear in mind your hint as to
Charleston, and don't think ‘salt ’ will be necessary.
When I move, the Fifteenth 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.”
(Page 291.) It will be observed here that
General Sherman distinctly approves
General Halleck's suggestion that
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Charleston should be utterly desolated; that he regards
Columbia as equally deserving that fate; that he foresees that if the Fifteenth (
Howard's) corps should get a chance they would destroy the city; that he promises that this Fifteenth corps shall have the first chance at destroying the city; that he knows that his whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance upon the city; and subsequent events bear out every one of these points.
He marched the Fifteenth corps into
Columbia on the 17th of February, and the city was destroyed that night.
General Hampton evacuated the city about 9 o'clock Friday, the 17th;
General Sherman took possession before 10 o'clock; and the fires that destroyed the city began between 8 and 9 o'clock that evening — more than ten hours after the city was in
General Sherman's hands.
Second.
In his cross-examination before the
Mixed Claims Commission (in November or December, 1872)--that portion conducted by George Rivers
Walker--
General Sherman stated that in
Columbia soldiers not on duty and of the Fifteenth corps were allowed to disperse about the city; that his men were thoroughly under control, well disciplined, and that the long roll would at any time have summoned them to their ranks; that he feared they would burn the city, and that he would not restrain them to their ranks to save every city in
South Carolina.
I have not the text of this examination now before me, but am satisfied as to the correctness of this summary; and if it is incorrect it can easily be disproven, as it can be verified if correct.
Third.
General O. O. Howard, while in
Columbia in 1867, in a conversation with
General Hampton, held in the office of
Governor James L. Orr, several other witnesses being present, said that
General Sherman knew perfectly well that
General Hampton did not burn
Columbia; that no one was authorized to say that “our troops did not set fire to it, for I saw them do it myself.”
Governor Orr testified concerning that conversation to this effect: “
General Howard said in substance that the city was burned by United States troops; that he saw them fire many houses.”
There were several other witnesses to this conversation between
Generals Howard and
Hampton.
Fourth.
In his official report of the event, quoted above,
General Sherman goes something beyond the usual scope of a military paper in specifically charging the destruction of the city upon
General Hampton.
This specific charge was unfortunate for
General Sherman, in that all the evidence goes to prove that the charge is
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rash.
Colonel Stone received the surrender of the city from
Mayor Goodwyn as early in the day as 10 o'clock, and took immediate posession of it, the
Confederate troops having been withdrawn before the surrender; and-note the importance of the connection — the conflagration that destroyed the city bagan after dark, say after 8 o'clock (
Colonel Stone himself says about 9 o'clock). That is to say, the
Federal troops had possession of
Columbia fully ten hours previous to the fires that destroyed it; and during this time
General Hampton's command was marching northward towards or beyond
Winnsboroa.
But further upon this point
Colonel Kennedy, of the Seventeenth corps, one of the “skirmish” line that entered the city ahead of
Colonel Stone's command, and one of
General Sherman's pet witnesses before the
Mixed Claims Commission, says in testimony: “I cannot for my life see how
Wade Hampton and
Beauregard are so positive that
Sherman's soldiers first set fire to the cotton, for not one was near it when the fire first started, and certainly neither
Hampton nor
Beauregard were within gunshot of either the cotton or the
State-House.”
This was before 9 o'clock that morning.
This glib witness, in proving the distance of the
Confederates at the time the cotton was fired, proves rather too much for his General, who is trying to prove that these same Confederates did fire that cotton.
Of the fire itself, that which destroyed the city,
Colonel Stone, after stating that the the time was “about 9 o'clock,” says: “All at once fifteen or twenty flames, from as many different places along the river, shot up, and in ten minutes the fate of
Columbia was settled.”
Colonel Stone, it will be remembered, is the officer who, as the official representative of
General Sherman, received from
Mayor Goodwyn the surrender of
Columbia.
Fifth.
General Sherman did not submit before the
Mixed Claims Commission the testimony of
Colonel Stone, who was sent by himself into
Columbia about two hours earlier than he (
General Sherman) and his main witnesses arrived there.
For not submitting this important testimony
General Sherman offers the frivolous pretext of not knowing
Colonel Stone's address.
Sixth.
Adjutant S. H. M. Byers, in a pamphlet entitled “What I Saw in Dixie; or, Sixteen Months in Rebel Prison,” says: “The boys, too, were spreading the conflagration by firing the city in a hundred places.”
The “boys” seem to have done that night exactly as
General Sherman told
General Halleck they generally did, that is, “do their work up pretty well;” for no one should complain of a hundred separate applications of the incendiary torch as not being “pretty well” in its way.
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Seventh.
Mr. Whitelaw Reid's “
Ohio in the war” says of this destruction of
Columbia: “It was the most monstrous barbarity of the barbarous march.”
This opinion bears upon the character of the act, not upon the question of who did it.
Eighth.
Before the
Mixed Claims Commission scores of witnesses testified to the fact that the soldiers of
Sherman's army set fire to the city in hundreds of places; that they carried about torches, kerosene or petroleum balls, and buckets of the inflammable fluid, lighting fires wherever the wind would not carry the flames fast enough; that this was done often in the presence of their officers, who made no attempt to check or to punish them; and that — as above shown in
Sherman's letter to
Halleck--
General Sherman selected his guards from a corps notorious for their violent and destroying habits, and that, with opportunities furnished by the
commanding General himself, these men plundered, burned and robbed in the presence of their officers, and all this with the previous, present and perfect knowledge of
General Sherman himself.
Ninth.
Mr. William Beverly Nash, a negro, then resident in
Columbia, now a State
Senator of
South Carolina, who was a delegate to the
Philadelphia Repubican Convention that nominated
President Grant in 1872, has made affidavit to the effect that the
Federal troops burned
Columbia and that
General Hampton had nothing to do with it. This is an eye witness of a race and of a party not likely to stretch a point in
General Hampton's favor.
Tenth.
Dr. T. J. Goodwyn,the
Mayor of
Columbia, who surrendered the city to
Colonel Stone, in his affidavit testifies that with a number of leading citizens he called upon
General Sherman two days after the fire; that in the course of conversation about the burning of the city,
General Sherman said that he thought his troops burned the city, but excused them because, as he alleged, the citizens had given them liquor.
Generals Howard and
Blair and other Federal officers were present at this conversation.
It is manifest that
General Sherman afterwards forgot about this liquor matter when he talked before the
Claims Commission, seven years later, about the discipline of his soldiers and the long-roll's power to bring every man to his ranks at any moment,
Eleventh.
Colonel Stone, who received the city in surrender, two hours before
General Sherman entered it, in a letter to the Chicago
Tribune, says: “The streets in some instances contained bales of cotton which had been cut open, and these caught fire twice or three times during the day; but these fires had been promptly put
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out by some of the firemen of the city, aided by a detail of soldiers under charge of an officer. * * * I now (later in the day) had intimation that the
Union officers released by us from the city prisons had formed a society, to which had been added many members from our soldiers and the negroes, the object of which society was to burn
Columbia.”
This movement is mentioned, not to account for the burning, but to show the feeling in the army — a feeling of which
General Sherman was fully aware before he furnished that opportunity for its wreaking.
Twelfth.
The following towns and villages in
South Carolina, in some of which at least there was no cotton in the streets, were burned either in whole or in part during the same campaign:
Robertsville,
Grahamville,
McPhersonville,
Barnwell,
Blackville,
Orangeburg,
Lexington,
Winnsboroa,
Camden,
Lancaster,
Chesterfield,
Cheraw and
Darlington.
Thirteenth.
General Beauregard, and not
General Hampton, was the highest military authority in
Columbia at that time.
General Hampton was assigned to duty at
Columbia on the night of the 16th, Thursday; and the order issued about the cotton came from
General Beauregard at the request of
General Hampton (through the latter, of course); and that order signed by
Captain Rawlins Lowndes,
Assistant Adjutant-General, was that the cotton be not burned.
Captain Lowndes in his affidavit, submitted in evidence before the
Mixed Claims Commission, after explaining that
General Hampton, after conference with
General Beauregard, had directed him (
Captain Lowndes) to issue an order that no cotton should be fired, adds: “This I did at once, and when I left
Columbia, which I did after the entrance of the
Federal troops, not one bale of cotton was burned, nor had any been fired by our troops.
At the time I was acting as Assistant A. A. G. for
General Hampton.”
This order not to burn the cotton is not important as showing the origin of the fire, because it hardly touches that question directly at all; but it is important in its bearing upon the veracity of
General Sherman, who in his official report (1865) said that
General Hampton “ordered that all cotton, public and private, should be moved into the streets and fired.”
The existence of that order — not to burn the cotton — and the testimony of
General Beauregard,
General Hampton and
Captain Lowndes may be accepted as settling that one point.
Fourteenth.
General Sherman, in his report to the
Committee on the Conduct of the
War (page 6 of Part 1 of the Supplemental
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Report), says: “I hereto subjoin complete details;” but from these details, called complete, the
General has omitted all his correspondence between the 16th and the 21st of February--the period covering the destruction of
Columbia.
Both before and after this event the correspondence submitted is frequent and altogether voluminous, but in these five days not a word is given there.
Why are these letters withheld, and where are they?
Such is a brief outline of the case
Columbia has against
General Sherman.
The points above given are not the whole evidence in the case, but merely illustrative items, the great body of proof lying beyond the limits of a paper like this.
The Mixed Claims Commission has “settled” one point — shall the
United States pay for the property destroyed in
Columbia?--in the negative.
Let that remain settled.
Columbia has another case already in action before the great assize of history.
The court are the historians who are to sum up the evidence, and the jury is the civilized world.
Before that assize she is preparing the evidence.
Her points are sharply defined ones, and she makes them without indirectness or chicanery.
A local committee of citizens of
Columbia, with
Chancellor Carroll, a jurist of ability and purity of character, at its head, has been already several years collecting testimony upon the burning of that city in 1865, and the evidence thus put in legal form will probably have some influence in shaping the opinion of the civilized world.
Columbia expects to make, among probably others, the following points, and she will rely in the strongest of them upon
General Sherman's testimony or that of his own witnesses: first, that
General Sherman desired the destruction of
Columbia; second, that
General Sherman knew that his soldiers desired the same thing; third, that
General Sherman believed that if the Fifteenth army corps were quartered in that city they would destroy it; fourth, that
General Sherman, thus desiring, thus knowing and thus believing, did quarter the Fifteenth corps in
Columbia; fifth, that the
Federal forces, under
Colonel Stone, of the Fifteenth corps, received the city in surrender from
Mayor Goodwyn, and took military possession of it about 10 o'clock Friday morning, the 17th of February, 1865; sixth, that the body of the Fifteenth corps entered the city an hour or two later than the command of
Colonel Stone; seventh, that the conflagration which destroyed the city began about 8 o'clock in the evening--ten hours subsequent to the occupation; eighth, that the conflagration began in several places by
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concert, of which notice was given with signal rockets; ninth, that Federal soldiers in large numbers aided in spreading the conflagration by brand, match and torch; tenth, that as to the cotton,
General Beauregard on the 14th ordered
Major Greene, commandant of the post, to have the cotton moved out of the warehouses to a place or places where it could be burned, if it should become necessary to burn it, without endangering the city, and that
Major Greene, having no available transportation, placed the cotton in the broadest of the streets, as the best he could do under the circumstances; eleventh, that on the 16th, when
General Hampton was assigned to duty at
Columbus, he urged
General Beauregard, his superior officer, to order that the cotton be not burned, that
General Beuregard so ordered and that the order was issued by
Captain Lowndes,
Assistant Adjutant-General, from
General Hampton's headquarters; twelfth, that all the fires that arose from the burning cotton during the day (Friday), in whatever way caused, were extinguished by the local fire companies, assisted by the citizens and Federal soldiers; thirteenth, that several citizens of
Columbia, during the day (Friday) were warned by officers and soldiers of
Sherman's army of the impending conflagration of the city to take place that night; fourteenth, that the conflagration did take place that night, announced by signals and beginning at several places to the windward of the heart of the city; fifteenth, that numerous Federal officers witnessed the active agency of the soldiers in spreading the conflagration without taking timely steps to prevent the same; and, sixteenth, that in fine,
General Sherman is morally responsible for the burning of Columbla.