Living in a grave--An adventure in the woods of South Carolina--Life
in the asylum yard at the capital of South Carolina--The song of
"Sherman's March to the Sea"--How it came to be written--Final
escape--The burning up of South Carolina's capital.
Now we were near the capital of South Carolina. It is our third prison.
We were placed in a cleared field among the pine woods, a few miles from
the town. Here we spent a part of a terrible winter exposed to the storm
and rain. We had no shelter save such as we made at last of sticks and
logs that we were allowed to carry in from the neighboring wood. Our
food was wretched, we had almost no clothing, and the weather was very
bad nearly all the time. We were surrounded by a line of guards. A
battery constantly in readiness to fire on us should an alarm be given
stood near by. Our food was still the half-cooked corn and cobs
together, with quantities of a poor and sickly sorghum molasses. We
heard that the Rebel army was living little better than we were. In
ridicule of the rations the prisoners dubbed this prison pen "Camp
Sorghum." Every man among us was sick with diarrhoea. The little
grave-yard for the prisoners near by grew rapidly. The details of our
life in this miserable camp I shall not relate. They were simply too
horrible. As for myself,--my only shelter was a hole in the ground, four
feet deep, four feet wide and eight feet long. It was covered with
boughs and earth. Lieutenant Morris and myself occupied this living
grave for months. We had a tiny fire-place of clay built in the end of
it, where we burned roots, and the long rainy nights we two sat there
alone, reading an old newspaper by our root-light or talking of our
far-away homes. One very stormy night our water-soaked roof fell in on
us, and then we were compelled to walk about in the rain. I wonder now
that any soul survived the miseries of that camp. Valley Forge was
paradise compared to it. But all this misery was a part of war.
Naturally, numbers ran the guard lines at this woeful prison pen and
escaped into the woods. Firing by the sentinels on these escaping
prisoners was a common occurrence on dark nights. Here and there an
officer was killed, and sometimes under circumstances that marked the
sentinel a common murderer. A battery of loaded cannons stood outside
the guard line, with orders to open on the prisoners should five musket
shots be heard. With the constant escaping of prisoners at night these
five fatal shots could occur at any hour.
For my own part, I resolved to again attempt escape, but my efforts
failed again, and twice in succession. I recall with a shudder how one
night late in November my friend, Lieutenant Ecking of New York, was
foully murdered. He had bribed a guard to let two or three of us run
across the line that night at midnight. The bribe was to consist of a
silver watch. Some of these men were easily bribed. They were not
regular Confederate soldiers, but usually cowardly home guards, who
regarded the murdering of a helpless prisoner a heroic act.
When midnight came three of us were secreted close to the dead line. As
soon as the bribed sentinel came to his post and commenced walking up
and down his beat Lieutenant Ecking rose and approached him. The night
was clear moonlight. The moment Ecking had crossed the dead line, and
was holding the watch up to the guard, the coward shot him dead. For
this outrage the home guard received a furlough.
About this time, too, Lieutenant Turbayne was murdered by a guard for
mistaking the ringing of a bell. Some of us had been permitted to go out
on parole and carry in wood at stated times. Without notice, this
privilege was suspended, but the bellman, by mistake, rang as usual.
Turbayne started for the dead line. "Go back, halt!" shouted a sentinel.
Turbayne turned to obey, but was instantly shot in the back and dropped
dead. There was a furious commotion among the prisoners. The guards,
too, collected about the spot. The Rebel officer in charge left his
lunch and walked over also. He held in his hand a great piece of pumpkin
pie, and continued eating from it as he stood there by the corpse of the
man they had murdered. There was almost a mutiny in the prison camp, and
one proper leader at that moment would have put an end to the whole
Rebel outfit. In the end it would have been death to the whole of us.
Previous to this threatened outbreak I had again tried my own chance at
escaping. It was now November 4, 1864, a cold blustering day, and the
prisoners in their rags and almost barefooted stood and shivered in the
naked field. At four o'clock a dozen were paroled and allowed to go out
to the woods and carry in some fuel.
Lieutenant Fritchie and myself managed to mix ourselves among this
little paroled company, and forgot to return to the enclosure. We helped
a little in the fuel getting, and then suddenly disappeared in the pine
forests. For some days we crept about in the great pine woods, scarcely
knowing our direction or where we were going. Our leaving had been so
sudden that we were planless. Here and there we stumbled onto a darkey,
who never hesitated to bring us corn hoe cake or whatever eatables he
might happen to have in his cabin. The slaves universally were the
prisoners' friends, and they knew a hundred times more about the war and
its object than their plantation masters ever supposed. Many an escaping
prisoner was fed by them and, with the north star as a guide, conducted
to safety. Many an army movement was made possible by loyal negroes.
Barring an occasional Union white man, they were the only friends the
soldiers had in the South.
Lieutenant Fritchie and I had some queer adventures while we wandered
about the woods of South Carolina during this little leave of absence
from the Confederates. We did not see a single white man, save one, and
he tried to shoot us. One night we lodged in an open-topped corn-crib,
not knowing in the darkness that we were quite close to an inhabited
farmhouse. When daylight came we peeped over the corn-crib and were much
astonished to see a woman at her wash-tub on the back porch of a cabin
close by. She must have seen our heads, for that very moment she stopped
her washing and entered the cabin. Shortly she appeared again, followed
by a man, who took one long steady look at the corn-crib; then he
entered the cabin, and we knew it was to get his gun. Very quick
resolution and action on our part became advisable. A little plowed
field only separated our corn-crib, at the back, from a thick piece of
woods. In a moment the man was out again on the porch, bearing a musket.
"Drop to the ground behind the crib and run to the woods," said
Fritchie. "I'll keep watch on the man. I'll drop down too. When you are
across wave your hand if he is not coming, and then I'll run." In a
moment's time I was running across the plowed field, keeping the crib
between me and the porch of the cabin. The man with the musket never saw
me. I waved to Fritchie; he, too, started on the run, and to this hour I
laugh to myself when I picture to my mind Fritchie, a short, stumpy
fellow, tumbling absolutely heels over head in his haste to cover that
bit of plowed ground.
Very shortly we heard bloodhounds bellowing. We knew too well what that
meant. Numbers of escaping prisoners had been torn to pieces by them.
That was the common way of catching runaway slaves and prisoners of war
down South. They hunt "niggers" that way to-day down there.
By hard running, turns and counter-turns, and frequent crossing and
recrossing little streams, we threw the dogs off our track, and slept
until night in the thicket. The wind blew hard and cold that night, and
as we stood secreted under a thorn-tree by the roadside two men passed,
so close we could have touched them. Something told us they, too, were
escaping prisoners. We tried to attract their attention enough to be
sure. One of us spoke, scarcely more than whisper. Instantly and in
alarm the two men bounded away like scared wolves. Days afterward we
found out that they had been not only fleeing prisoners, but were,
indeed, two of our personal friends.
The next night was fair, and a full round moon lighted up the sandy
desert with its oasis of tall, immense pine trees. The white winding
road of sand that seemed to have been abandoned for a hundred years was
almost trackless. Here and there, too, we saw an abandoned turpentine
camp, the spiles still in the trees and the troughs lying rotting at
their feet.
There was nothing but silence there, and loneliness, and moonlight. Here
in the quiet night, if anywhere in the world, two poor escaping
prisoners of war would be in no danger of a foe.
For hours we trudged along, going where we knew not, when suddenly to
our amazement two mounted cavalrymen stood right in our way and called
to us to surrender. There was nothing to do but to obey. Our capture
had been an accident. These two officers, a captain and a lieutenant,
had been riding the country trying to catch some deserters from their
army and had blundered on to us. They started with us to Lexington jail,
some miles away. The captain rode a dozen yards or so ahead, with a
revolver in his hand. I trudged along in the sand at his side,
faithfully hanging on to his stirrup strap. The lieutenant and Fritchie
followed us in a like manner in the moonlight. It seems to have been a
romantic occasion, when I think of it now; we two Federals and these two
Confederates, there alone in the moonlight, and the big pine trees and
the white sands about. I could not help reflecting, though, how many a
captured prisoner had never been accounted for. Possibly we should never
see Lexington jail. It would be an easy thing for these men to leave our
bodies there in the sand somewhere. There were few words at first as we
plodded our slow way in the moonlight. At last my captain and I entered
into lively conversation about the South in general, and then both of us
hoped the war would soon come to an end. To my surprise the young
captain confided to me that he was, at heart, a Union man. "And why in
the Confederate army?" I asked, in astonishment. "Because," said the
captain, "everybody in my village in South Carolina is. I would have
been hooted to death had I remained at home. My father is a rich man; he
is opposed to the war, but he, too, is in the service at Richmond."
"Under the circumstances," I said, "I being Union, and you being Union,
why not look the other way a moment and let me try the time required to
reach yonder clump of trees." "No, not a thought of it," he answered
almost hotly. "You are my prisoner, I will do my duty." The subject was
dropped, and in half an hour Fritchie and I were inside a stone cell in
Lexington jail. "You can lie down on the stone floor and sleep if you
want to," the jailer said, crustily. The two young officers said a
cheery good-by and went away.
Before daybreak the door of our cell opened again and the gruff jailer
called, "Which of you is Adjutant Byers." Then he pushed a basket and
blanket in to me, and a little note. The basket was full of good warm
food and the little note, in a woman's hand, said: "With the compliments
of the captain's wife."
I think tears came to the eyes of both of us there in that cell that
night. It was among the few kindnesses I ever experienced in the
Confederacy. Of course it was a woman's act. The captain had gone to his
home near by and told his wife about his prisoners, and here was the
remembrance. The world is not so bad after all, we said to each other,
Fritchie and I.
The next day the jailer paraded us out in the corridor, and I think all
the people in the county came to see us, to remark on us, and touch us
with their hands. Most of these men, women, and children had absolutely
never seen a Northern man before, and a Yankee soldier was a greater
curiosity than a whole menagerie of polar bears. I saw the ignorance of
the "poor white trash" of the South that day. Not one in twenty of them
knew what the war was about. The negroes had a more intelligent notion
of affairs than did the people of the Carolinas.
In a few days Fritchie and I were conducted back to our prison pen near
Columbia, South Carolina.
Shortly they moved us once more. This time to the high-walled yard of
the lunatic asylum, inside the city. As they marched us through the
streets we could see how beautiful the little capital of South Carolina
was. It had handsome shops and residences, and beautiful shade trees
everywhere gave it a most attractive appearance. It was almost the best
known city of the South and here the fatal heresy of secession had been
born. As we went along the streets a mob of people gathered around us,
hooting and hissing their hatred at us, just as they had done that
first time we were taken through the town. A few wanted the guards to
give them a chance to hang us. It was a sorry sight--this band of
ragged, helpless, hungry loyalists being led like slaves and animals
through the hooting, threatening crowd. That mob, thirsting for our
blood, did not dream what was about to happen.
Here now in Columbia we were walled in just as we had been at Macon, and
our lives continued in much the same hardship as before. Only here I do
not recall that any prisoner was murdered. It is right to say, too, that
the outrages so often committed on prisoners here and elsewhere in the
South were not by the regular Confederate soldiers, but by home guards
usually set over us. It seems now, when I recall it, that life was not
quite so bad here. We soon had some boards given us; so we built sheds
to live in. As for myself, I, with three or four comrades, lived in a
little wedge tent. It was very cold and midwinter now. I scarcely slept
at night, but walked about to keep warm. It was on one of these midnight
tramps that it occurred to me to write the song, "Sherman's March to the
Sea." I recur to it here because it gave its name to the great campaign
it celebrates.
The story of how it came to be written cannot perhaps be wholly without
interest. During the days that Sherman's army was tramping from Atlanta
toward Savannah we prisoners were not permitted to have any news from
the outside of any kind whatever. There was a fear that if we knew what
was going on a mutiny might follow. We were constantly being told by our
guards that Sherman's invading army was being headed off or destroyed.
In the beginning we feared these stories to be true, but the uneasy
actions and sullen looks of our captors soon began to belie their
statements. As said, three or four of us prisoners occupied a little
wedge tent. A negro had recently been allowed to come into the prison
pen mornings to sell bread to those who had any money with which to buy.
Our little mess got a small loaf now every morning; not more for the
bread, though we needed that badly enough, than for a certain little
roll of paper carefully hidden away in the middle of the loaf. It was a
Columbia morning newspaper printed on soft thin paper and of extremely
small size. Our loyal negro had easily enough been persuaded to hide a
copy of this paper in the bread for us as often as he could have the
chance unobserved. A knowing wink from him told us when to eat our loaf
of bread inside the tent and with one of us watching at the door while
another read in a low voice the news from the invading army. The paper
rolled up was not larger than a walnut.
It was full of misrepresentations and reports of disasters to Sherman,
to mislead the Georgians and lessen their alarm. Yet between the lines
we easily enough read that Sherman was surely marching on, and
victorious. His columns were coming nearer to us; and how we longed
night and day that he might capture the prison! At last we saw that
there was no hope. He was passing us,--though, but many miles away.
Then one morning, when we unrolled the little paper in the bread and
read it, we knew that _he had reached the sea_. Savannah had fallen. The
consternation of the Southerners was tremendous. But, next, they
pretended that they could box Sherman up in Savannah and capture his
whole army.
One December night when I was tramping up and down the prison pen in the
dark, trying to keep warm, I reflected on the tremendous importance of
what Sherman had done. And I wondered what so curious a campaign would
be called. It was not a series of battles--it was a great _march_. And
then the title, and almost the words, of the song came to me.
The next morning when my tent comrades were out of doors shivering over
a little fire I remained in our little heap of straw, and completed the
verses.
I went out to the fire and read them to my comrades. A Lieutenant
Rockwell happened to be present and asked permission to make a copy of
the verses. He, with many others, slept on the ground under the hospital
building. One had to crawl on his hands and knees to enter there. There
was a most capable Glee Club among the officers, and they had by some
means secured a flute, violins, and bass viol for accompaniments. They
kept their instruments under the house, too, where they slept.
Every afternoon this Glee Club was permitted to sing and play on the
little elevated porch of the hospital. The only condition was that
Southern songs should be sung, not less than Northern songs. There was
no trouble about that. The songs of our captors were better than no
songs. Besides, these singers made music. All the crowd of prisoners,
eight hundred now, often stood in front of the little porch to enjoy the
singing. Almost hundreds of the Rebels, too, together with many ladies
of Columbia, climbed up onto the walls, where the guards stood, and
applauded the singers as much as any.
One drizzly afternoon I was standing by a little persimmon tree in the
midst of the crowd listening to the songs, when Major Isett, leader of
the Glee Club, said: "Now we will have a song about Sherman." To my
astonishment, it was my "Sherman's March to the Sea."
It was received in a tremendous fashion. Everybody cheered and hurrahed.
The news of Sherman's victories was fresh upon them. In five minutes'
time the good fortune of my song was settled. The name of the author was
loudly called for; someone saw me by the little tree, and I was quickly
hauled to the front and up onto the platform. In a few moments an
unknown officer among the many prisoners became a sort of prison hero.
Everybody wanted the song, everybody sang it; and clever penmen made a
good thing making copies at twenty dollars apiece, Confederate money. As
a little compliment to me the captain of the prison allowed me to sleep
on the floor of the hospital room. To me that was important, as shall
appear. Later in this narrative, too, will be seen how an exchanged
prisoner, by the name of Tower, who had an artificial leg, carried the
song in this wooden limb through the lines to our soldiers in the North,
where it was sung everywhere and with demonstration. In a week it had
given its name to the campaign, and a million copies of it soon passed
into circulation.
Lieutenant Rockwell, who had asked my leave to copy the verses that
first morning, was a composer, and there in the dust under the old
hospital he had, unknown to me, written the first music to which the
song was ever sung. Later, it had many other settings, but that one,
though difficult, remained the best. The song has often since been sung
to the air of "The Red, White, and Blue." This is the history of the
song, which I print here as a part of this narrative.
SHERMAN'S MARCH TO THE SEA
Our camp fires shone bright on the mountains
That frowned on the river below,
While we stood by our guns in the morning
And eagerly watched for the foe--
When a rider came out from the darkness
That hung over mountain and tree,
And shouted, "Boys, up and be ready,
For Sherman will march to the sea."
Then cheer upon cheer for bold Sherman
Went up from each valley and glen,
And the bugles re-echoed the music
That came from the lips of the men.
For we knew that the stars in our banner
More bright in their splendor would be,
And that blessings from Northland would greet us
When Sherman marched down to the sea.
Then forward, boys, forward to battle,
We marched on our wearisome way,
And we stormed the wild hills of Resaca,--
God bless those who fell on that day--
Then Kenesaw, dark in its glory,
Frowned down on the flag of the free,
But the East and the West bore our standards,
And Sherman marched on to the sea.
Still onward we pressed, till our banners
Swept out from Atlanta's grim walls,
And the blood of the patriot dampened
The soil where the traitor flag falls;
But we paused not to weep for the fallen,
Who slept by each river and tree;
Yet we twined them a wreath of the laurel
As Sherman marched down to the sea.
O, proud was our army that morning
That stood where the pine darkly towers,
When Sherman said: "Boys, you are weary,
This day fair Savannah is ours."
Then sang we a song for our chieftain
That echoed over river and lea,
And the stars in our banner shown brighter
When Sherman marched down to the sea.
[SHERMAN'S MARCH TO THE SEA.--From _Eggleston's Famous War
Ballads_.--General Sherman, in a recent conversation with the editor
of this collection, declared that it was this poem with its phrase,
"march to the sea," that threw a glamour of romance over the
campaign which it celebrates. Said General Sherman: "The thing was
nothing more or less than a change of base; an operation perfectly
familiar to every military man, but a poet got hold of it, gave it
the captivating label, 'The March to the Sea,' and the unmilitary
public made a romance out of it." It may be remarked that the
General's modesty overlooks the important fact that the romance lay
really in his own deed of derring-do; the poet merely recorded it,
or at most interpreted it to the popular intelligence. The glory of
the great campaign was Sherman's and his army's; the joy of
celebrating it was the poet's; the admiring memory of it is the
people's.--EDITOR.]
As stated, I slept nights now on the floor of the prison hospital. This
added comfort, however, did not tempt me to stay in prison, if I could
get away. Once more we heard that the prisoners were to be carted away
to some safer place, out of the line of Sherman's army, now turned North
and moving rapidly toward us. A night or two before this move of
prisoners really commenced Lieutenant Devine of Philadelphia joined me
in an effort to get away. The walls of the least used room of the
hospital were made of joined boards. By the use of an old case knife,
hacked into a saw, or auger, we managed to cut a hole sufficiently large
to permit us to pull ourselves through and out into an attic above a
little porch. We repaired the boards as best we could and crept out
into the dark hole. It was the attic of the same porch on which our Glee
Club stood when they sang my song. It was a little cramped up place we
were in, where we could neither sit erect nor lie at full length. There
were no guards inside the prison hospital; the night was very dark; the
sick prisoners seemed to be sleeping. A dim lamp hung from the ceiling.
We were not detected. The next night at midnight, when the prisoners
were being marched away, two of them were missing. What a night and day
and part of another night that was for us, crooked and cramped as we
were, in the top of that little porch.
At the next midnight, when every soul, prisoners, guards and all, seemed
to be gone far away and dead silence was upon the place, Devine and I
crept down from our hiding place. The big gate was closed and locked. By
the aid of a scantling I managed to get up onto the high brick wall. My
surprise was immense to see guards waiting for us outside, and to know
that we were discovered. One of the guards rushed up to his post at the
top of the wall, but he was too late to shoot; we were already in hiding
among the empty board huts and barracks.[B]
[B] When springing down from the top of that wall I lost my shoes--I
had had them in my hand. I also let fall from my pocket the pages of
this diary. I could not think of losing them, and at the risk of my
life I slipped over the dead line and from under the guard's very
feet, I snatched them up and ran behind one of the huts.
In a moment the big gate opened and a hundred men rushed in, looking for
the escaping Yankees. They howled, they cursed at us, they set the
barracks on fire. Then amid the mêlée and excitement in the dark my
comrade and myself pulled our gray blankets about us, picked up a water
bucket each, and pushed up to the guard at the gate. We were "going for
water," we said. "The lieutenant says the fire must be put out." Without
waiting a reply we hurried out in the darkness. There were some vain
shots after us.
Shortly we heard the tramp of horses coming toward us. A friendly
culvert in the road into which we dodged afforded us protection while a
whole company of Johnny Rebs rode over our heads. What would they have
thought, that night, had they known it as they went skipping along with
arms and jingling sabers, to confront Sherman's advance guards?
We were gone. After a while, in the outskirts of the city, we saw a
light in a cabin and a negro walking up and down by the window. Every
negro we knew to be a loyal friend. This one we called out among some
rose bushes in the dooryard. Instantly, and without fear, we told him
who we were and that we were in his power. There is not a question but
he would have been well rewarded had he betrayed us to the Confederate
soldiers in the city that night. Few words were spoken. That morning two
escaped prisoners were secreted under some bean stalks in the garret of
the negro's cabin. The negro's sick wife lay in the single room below.
Had we been discovered now that negro would have been hanged from his
own door lintel. And well he knew it.
Sherman's army was already pounding at the gates of the town. He was
crossing the river and his shells reached to the capital. This much we
knew from what we could hear in the yard below, for the negro's cabin
stood at the edge of a green lawn where General Chestnut had his
headquarters. We broke a little hole through the siding of the house,
and now could see what the general and his staff were doing. We also
could hear much that was said. Once we thought ourselves discovered, for
we observed two or three of the general's negro servants standing in a
group on the grass looking steadily toward the spot where our little
improvised window was. What on earth were they looking at?
It was not much the old negro could give us to eat. A little dried beef
and some cold corn bread; that was all, save that once he brought us a
gallon of buttermilk. He had no cow, but he would not tell us where
this, to us, heavenly nectar had come from.
There was much hurrying of officers back and forth at General Chestnut's
headquarters, and plainly we could see there was great excitement. Our
own negro was kept going back and forth into the town to pick up for us
whatever news he could of the fight going on at the river. After awhile
the cannonading grew louder, and it seemed to us the conflict must be
right at the outskirts of the town. Then we saw General Chestnut
hurriedly ride on to the headquarter's lawn, and we distinctly heard him
say to an officer, "Sherman has got a bridge down. The game's up. We
must evacuate." In a few minutes the sound of the guns increased, and
then we saw General Chestnut call his slaves to him to bid them
farewell. It was a touching scene, amid the dramatic surroundings. He
seemed very kind, and some of them in their ignorance wept. "You will be
free," he said. "Be good." I thought, he too was affected as he mounted
his horse and, followed by his staff, rode away. He was hardly out of
sight when our negro protector came running toward the cabin. He was
tremendously excited. A tall, old cylinder hat he had picked up on the
way was on his head, his eyes bulged out, his hands waved like
windmills; he was celebrating. In a moment the black face and the
cylinder hat shot up the ladder and through the hatch-way to where we
were.
"God Almighty be thanked!" he cried in a loud voice. "Massa, the Stars
and Stripes are waving above the capital of South Carolina. Praise to
the God Almighty!"
Sure enough, Union troops, had entered, and a flag from my own State had
been run up on the State House. Instantly we bade him hurry and bring
some Union soldiers to us. In his absence Devine and I stood shaking
each other's hands and thanking God for our deliverance. No slave who
had his chains knocked off that day by the coming of the Union army felt
more thankful than we, freed from the wretchedness and horrors of
fifteen months of imprisonment. Now we could see the Confederate cavalry
evacuating the town. Whole companies passed, each trooper having a sheaf
of oats slung to his saddle bow. Shortly our black friend returned, and
with him two Union soldiers. "It is time to drink, boys," they cried
out, as they fairly forced us to partake of the whisky in their
canteens. When we all went down into the yard I was sure we would be
recaptured, for the Rebel rear-guard was passing close to our cabin. The
flying troops, however, had fish of their own to fry, and were in too
much haste to be looking after us. Now, too, we were surrounded by
General Chestnut's black servants, who were hopping about, giving thanks
for their freedom. I asked one of them what it was they had been looking
at so attentively the day before, when I had seen them gazing right at
our hiding-place. "Ha ha! massa! we just knowed you was up there all the
time. Reckon you didn't like that ar buttermilk what we'uns sent you."
Our negro friend then had made confidents of them, and we had been fed,
without knowing it, on some of the good things from General Chestnut's
kitchen. Should the general ever read this little book, I hope he will
cease wondering what became of his buttermilk that day at Columbia.
Now, our two soldiers escorted us to a street where some of the army had
halted and stacked arms. A Union flag hung over a stack of muskets, and
no human being will ever know with what thankful heart-beatings and
tears we gathered its silken folds into our arms. Now we knew that we
were free. The terrible days were indeed over, and God's rainbow
illumined our sky.
In half an hour the victorious veterans of Sherman's army, their great
leader riding before, with bands playing and banners flying, entered the
captured city. My comrade and I stood on a high door-step and saw them
pass. Someone pointed us out to Sherman, and for a moment the whole
moving army was halted till he greeted the freed prisoners. We two
comrades lived a month in that short seventeenth day of February, 1865,
in Columbia. I think we shook hands with a thousand soldiers, even with
many soldiers we had never seen before. It seemed to us that everybody
must be as glad to see us as we were to see them.
That night Columbia was burned to the ground amid untold horrors. The
conflagration had commenced from bales of cotton that the enemy had
fired and left in the street to prevent falling into the Union hands. A
big wind rose toward evening and the burning cotton flakes were flying
all over the city. It was a terrible spectacle that night. My comrade
and I walked about the streets till nearly morning. Whole squares and
streets were crumbling to ashes and tall buildings tumbled down
everywhere. Here and there, too, there was a terrific explosion. It was
Moscow done over on a smaller scale. A division of Union troops, under
Hazen, was sent into the town to fight the flames and to arrest every
man discovered firing houses or walking around without a pass. So it
happened that my comrade and myself, though but innocent spectators,
were at midnight arrested and taken to provost headquarters. We very
soon explained ourselves and were released and sent to comfortable
quarters, where we slept till late the next day. It was four nights
since we had had any sleep at all.
But the sights of that awful night will never fade from my memory. Most
of the citizens of Columbia had sons or relations in the Rebel army.
Half of them were dead, the army itself was flying everywhere, and in
the blackness of this terrible night their fortunes were all lost, their
homes were all burning up. Many wandered about wringing their hands and
crying; some sat stolid and speechless in the street watching everything
that they had go to destruction. A few wandered around, wholly demented.
Some of the invading soldiers tried earnestly to extinguish the flames;
others broke into houses and added to the conflagration. Numbers of the
Federal prisoners, who only a few weeks before had been marched through
the streets like felons, had escaped, and what average human nature led
them to do never will be known. There were fearful things going on
everywhere. It was reported that an explosion occurred in one house and
that twenty-four soldiers, carousing there, were lost in the ruins. Most
of the people of Columbia would have been willing to have died that
night, then and there. What had they left to live for? _This, too, was
war._
When the army entered in the afternoon, Lieutenant Devine and I, as
related, stood on the high steps of a mansion and watched it pass.
Shortly after a very charming young woman, a Mrs. C----, seeing us, came
down and invited us into her father's house and gave us food. It was the
first real food we had had for many, many months. The lady's father was
a rich jeweler, and, though a Southerner, was a Union man. Her own
husband, however, was somewhere in the Southern army. My comrade and I
spent an entertaining hour in the mansion, and then went and walked
about the city.
At six o'clock the awful cry, "The town is burning up, the town is
burning up!" was heard everywhere. Devine and I at once thought of Mrs.
C----and our friends of the afternoon, and hurried to their home to
offer help. The flames were already across the street from there. Mrs.
C----'s father was weeping in the drawing-room. Once he took me by the
arm and led me to where we could see his own business establishment
burning to the ground. "There goes the savings of a life," said he, in
bitterness. "There is what the curse of secession has done for us; there
is what Wade Hampton and the other political firebrands have done for
South Carolina." My comrade and I at once began carrying some of the
more valuable goods out of the house for them, doing everything possible
to help them save some remnant from their beautiful and luxurious home.
We ran up and down the mansion stairs until we were almost dead with
exhaustion. Everything we could save we piled into a phaeton that stood
by the yard. Once the lady cried that her child was still in the house,
burning up. Her shrieks pierced even the noise of that fearful night.
Her alarm was without cause, for I soon found the child safe in the arms
of a faithful slave nurse. She had simply carried it out of danger.
When the walls of the house seemed about to fall, Devine and I took the
loaded buggy, he pulling in the shafts, I pushing behind, and, followed
by the weeping family on foot, we drew it for a mile or more to the
outer edge of the town. Here we left them in safety by a little wood,
yet not knowing if we would ever see them again. Many of our soldiers
were burnt up that night.
The next day Sherman's army left the ruins of the city behind them and
marched away. They had, however, left supplies of rations for their
unfortunate enemies. A train of empty wagons was also furnished for
those fugitives who wished to follow the army and work their way North.
Hundreds, possibly thousands, left the smoking ruins of their homes and
traveled along with us in every conceivable conveyance that was heard
of. Black and white, slave and free, rich and poor, joined in the
procession behind the army. Mrs. C---- and her father's family were
among them.
I now tried to find my regiment. It was gone. Many battles and many
marches had so decimated it that the little fragment left had been
disbanded and transferred into a regiment of cavalry.
Colonel Silsby, of the Tenth Iowa, offered me a place with his mess. I
accepted. The Colonel, as it happened, had charge of perhaps a hundred
prisoners, captured on the march. Naturally, I was interested to go
among them. I soon saw how much better they fared than I had done when
in Southern hands. Two or three of them, as it happened, had been among
the guards who had treated us so badly while we were in the prison known
as "Camp Sorghum," outside of Columbia. They were perfectly terrified
when they learned that I had been there under their charge. They seemed
to fear instant and awful retaliation; but I thought of nothing of the
kind. I was too glad just to be free to be thinking of any vengeance.
A curious incident now happened. This was the discovery, among these
prisoners, of the husband of the young Mrs. C---- who had given us food
in Columbia and whose belongings I and my comrade had tried to save. He
was overjoyed to learn from me that his wife and child were at least
alive. I instantly went to General Logan, and related to him how this
man's family had been kind to me the day that I escaped. I had no
trouble in securing his release. It was at Logan's headquarters, too,
that I had secured money and an order for provisions to give to Edward
Edwards, the black man who had been the means of my final rescue. His
sick wife had kept him behind, else he would have followed the army. We
left him in Columbia. Years later, as a sign of my gratitude toward this
slave, I dedicated a little volume to him, in which I had described my
prison life.