THE BURNING OF COLUMBIA.
“It has pleased God,” says the writer in the “Daily Phœnix,” already
quoted, “to visit our beautiful city with the most cruel fate which can
ever befall states or cities. He has permitted an invading army to
penetrate our country almost without impediment; to rob and ravage our
dwellings, and to commit three fifths of our city to the flames.
Eighty-four squares, out of one hundred and twenty-four which the city
contains, have been destroyed, with scarcely the exception of a single
house. The ancient capitol building of the State—that venerable
structure, which, for seventy years, has echoed with the eloquence and
wisdom of the most famous statesmen—is laid in ashes; six temples of the
Most High God have shared the same fate; eleven banking establishments;
the schools of learning, the shops of art and trade, of invention and
manufacture; shrines equally of religion, benevolence, and industry; are
all buried together, in one congregated ruin. Humiliation spreads her
ashes over our homes and garments, and the universal wreck exhibits only
one common aspect of despair.”
Columbia, the proud capital of the proudest State in the Union,—who ever
supposed that _she_ could be destined to such a fate? Who ever imagined
that in _this_ way that fine bird, secession, would come home to roost?
Almost until the last moment the people of South Carolina, relying upon
the immense prestige of their little State sovereignty, even after the
State was invaded, believed that the capital was safe. Already, during
the war, thousands of citizens from Charleston and other places, in
order to avoid the possibility of danger, had sought the retirement of
its beautiful shady streets and supposed impregnable walls. The
population of Columbia had thus increased, in two or three years, from
fourteen thousand to thirty-seven thousand. Then Sherman appeared,
driving clouds of fugitives before him into the city. Still the
inhabitants cherished their delusion, until it was dispelled by the
sound of the Federal cannon at their gates. The Confederate troops fell
back into the city, followed by bursting shells.
Then commenced the usual scenes of panic. “Terrible was the press, the
shock, the rush, the hurry, the universal confusion—such as might
naturally be looked for, in the circumstances of a city from which
thousands were preparing to fly, without previous preparations for
flight, burdened with pale and trembling women, their children and
portable chattels, trunks and jewels, family Bibles and the _lares
familiares_. The railroad depot for Charlotte was crowded with anxious
waiters upon the train, with a wilderness of luggage, millions, perhaps,
in value, much of which was left finally and lost. Throughout Tuesday,
Wednesday, and Thursday, these scenes of struggle were in constant
performance. The citizens fared badly. The Governments of the State and
of the Confederacy absorbed all the modes of conveyance. Transportation
about the city could not be had, save by a rich or favored few. No love
could persuade where money failed to convince, and SELF, growing bloated
in its dimensions, stared from every hurrying aspect, as you traversed
the excited and crowded streets. In numerous instances, those who
succeeded in getting away, did so at the cost of trunks and luggage;
and, under what discomfort they departed, no one who did not see can
readily conceive.”[19]
Numbers of the poorer classes took advantage of this confusion to
plunder the city. On Friday morning, they broke into the South Carolina
Railroad Depot, which was “crowded with the stores of merchants and
planters, trunks of treasure, innumerable wares and goods of fugitives,
all of great value. It appears that among its contents were some kegs of
powder. The plunderers paid, and suddenly, the penalties of their crime.
Using their lights freely and hurriedly, they fired a train of powder
leading to the kegs.” A fearful explosion followed, destructive to
property and life.[1]
Early on Friday the Confederate quartermaster and commissary stores were
thrown open to the people. Old men, women, children, and negroes, loaded
themselves with plunder. Wheeler’s cavalry rushed in for their share,
and several troopers were seen riding off “with huge bales of cotton on
their saddles.”[20]
The same day—Friday, February 17th—Sherman entered Columbia. To the
anxious mayor he said: “Not a finger’s breadth of your city shall be
harmed. You may lie down and sleep, satisfied that your town will be as
safe in my hands as in your own.” That night Columbia was destroyed.
It is still a question, who is responsible for this calamity. General
Sherman denies that he authorized it, and we are bound to believe him.
But did he not permit it? or was it not in his power at least to have
prevented it? General Howard is reported to have said to a clergyman of
the place, that no orders were given to burn Columbia, but the soldiers
had got the impression that its destruction would be acceptable at
head-quarters. Were the soldiers correct in their impression?
A member of General Sherman’s staff speaks thus of 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 smouldering in a bale of cotton long
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 two hundred 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 sufferings in the miserable pens I visited
yesterday on the other side of the river, sought this means of
retaliation. Again it is said that the soldiers who first entered the
town, intoxicated with success and a liberal supply of bad liquor, which
was freely distributed among them by designing citizens, in an insanity
of exhilaration set fire to unoccupied houses.”[21]
It is also probable that fires were set by citizen marauders. But is
this the whole truth with regard to the burning of Columbia?
I visited the place nearly a year after its great disaster, when the
passions of men had had time to cool a little. Through the courtesy of
Governor Orr I made acquaintance with prominent and responsible
citizens. To these gentlemen—especially to Mr. J. G. Gibbes, the present
mayor of the city—I am indebted for the following statements and
anecdotes.
Early in the evening, as the inhabitants, quieted by General Sherman’s
assurance, were about retiring to their beds, a rocket went up in the
lower part of the city. Another in the centre, and a third in the upper
part of the town, succeeded. Dr. R. W. Gibbes, father of the present
mayor, was in the street talking, near one of the Federal guards, who
exclaimed, on seeing the signals, “My God! I pity your city!” Mr.
Goodwyn, who was mayor at the time, reports a similar remark from an
Iowa soldier. “Your city is doomed! These rockets are the signal!”
Immediately afterwards fires broke out in twenty different places.
The dwellings of Secretary Trenholm and General Wade Hampton were among
the first to burst into flames. Soldiers went from house to house,
spreading the conflagration. Fireballs, composed of cotton saturated
with turpentine, were thrown in at doors and windows. Many houses were
entered, and fired by means of combustible liquids poured upon beds and
clothing, and ignited by wads of burning cotton, or matches from a
soldier’s pocket. The fire department came out in force, but the
hose-pipes were cut to pieces and the men driven from the streets. At
the same time universal plundering and robbery began.
The burning of the house of Dr. R. W. Gibbes,—an eminent physician,
well-known to the scientific world,—was thus described to me by his
son:—
“He had a guard at the front door; but some soldiers climbed in at the
rear of the house, got into the parlor, heaped together sheets, poured
turpentine over them, piled chairs on them, and set them on fire. As he
remonstrated with them, they laughed at him. The guard at the front door
could do nothing, for if he left his post, other soldiers would come in
that way.
“The guard had a disabled foot, and my father had dressed it for him. He
appeared very grateful for the favor, and earnestly advised my father to
save his valuables. The house was full of costly paintings, and
curiosities of art and natural history, and my father did not know what
to save and what to leave behind. He finally tied up in a bedquilt a
quantity of silver and gems. As he was going out of the door,—the house
was already on fire behind him,—the guard said, ‘Is that all you can
save?’ ‘It is all I can well carry,’ said my father. ‘Leave that with
me,’ said the guard; ‘I will take charge of it, while you go back and
get another bundle.’ My father thought he was very kind. He went back
for another bundle, and while he was gone, the guard ran off with his
lame leg and all the gems and silver.”
One of Mr. Gibbes’s neighbors, a widow lady, had an equally
conscientious guard. He said to her, “I can guard the front of the
house, but not the rear; and if you have anything valuable buried you
had better look after it.” She threw up her hands and exclaimed, “O, my
silver and my fine old wine, buried under that peach-tree!” The guard
immediately called a squad of men, and told them to respect the widow
lady’s wine and silver, buried under that peach-tree. He went with them,
and they dug a little to see if the treasures were safe. Finding the
wine, they tasted it to see if it merited the epithet “fine old.”
Discovering that it did, they showed their approbation of her good sense
and truthfulness by drinking it up. They then carried off the silver.
The soldiers, in their march through Georgia, and thus far into South
Carolina, had acquired a wonderful skill in finding treasures. They had
two kinds of “divining-rods,” negroes, and bayonets. What the unfaithful
servants of the rich failed to reveal, the other instruments, by
thorough and constant practice, were generally able to discover. On the
night of the fire, a thousand men could be seen, in the yards and
gardens of Columbia, by the glare of the flames, probing the earth with
bayonets. “Not one twentieth part of the articles buried in this city
escaped them,” Mr. Gibbes assured me.
The fire was seen at immense distances. A gentleman living eighty-five
miles north of Columbia, told me he could see to read in his garden that
night by the light it gave.
The dismay and terror of the inhabitants can scarcely be conceived. They
had two enemies, the fire in their houses and the soldiery without. Many
who attempted to bear away portions of their goods were robbed by the
way. Trunks and bundles were snatched from the hands of hurrying
fugitives, broken open, rifled, and then hurled into the flames.
Ornaments were plucked from the necks and arms of ladies, and caskets
from their hands. Even children and negroes were robbed.
Fortunately the streets of Columbia were broad, else many of the
fugitives must have perished in the flames which met them on all sides.
The exodus of homeless families, flying between walls of fire, was a
terrible and piteous spectacle. I have already described a similar scene
in a Reminiscence of Chambersburg, and shall not dwell upon this. The
fact that these were the wives and children and flaming homes of our
enemies, does not lessen the feeling of sympathy for the sufferers. Some
fled to the parks; others to the open ground without the city; numbers
sought refuge in the graveyards. Isolated and unburned dwellings were
crowded to excess with fugitives. “On Saturday morning,” said Mayor
Gibbes, “there were two hundred women and children in this house.”
Three fifths of the city in bulk, and four fifths in value, were
destroyed. The loss of property is estimated at thirty millions. No more
respect seems to have been shown for buildings commonly deemed sacred,
than for any others. The churches were pillaged, and afterwards burned.
St. Mary’s College, a Catholic institution, shared their fate. The
Catholic Convent, to which had been confided for safety many young
ladies, not nuns, and stores of treasure, was ruthlessly sacked. The
soldiers drank the sacramental wine, and profaned with fiery draughts of
vulgar whiskey the goblets of the communion service. Some went off
reeling under the weight of priestly robes, holy vessels, and
candlesticks.
Not even the Masonic and Odd Fellow lodges were spared. Afterwards tipsy
soldiers were seen about the streets dressed up in the regalias of these
orders. The sword of state, belonging to the Grand Lodge of South
Carolina, a massy, curious, two-edged weapon, of considerable antiquity,
was among the objects stolen.
The buildings and library of South Carolina College were saved.
Not much drunkenness was observed among the soldiers until after the
sacking of the city had been some time in progress. Then the stores of
liquors consumed exhibited their natural effect; and it is stated that
many perished in fires of their own kindling.
Yet the army of Sherman did not, in its wildest orgies, forget its
splendid discipline. “When will these horrors cease?” asked a lady of an
officer at her house. “You will hear the bugles at sunrise,” he replied;
“then they will cease, and not till then.” He prophesied truly. “At
daybreak, on Saturday morning,” said Mayor Gibbes, “I saw two men
galloping through the streets, blowing horns. Not a dwelling was fired
after that; immediately the town became quiet.”
Robberies, however, did not cease with the night. Watches and money
continued to be in demand. A soldier would ask a citizen the time. If
the latter was so imprudent as to produce his watch, it was instantly
snatched. “A very pretty watch that; I’ll take it, if you please,” was
the usual remark accompanying the act.
One old gentleman who had purchased two watches for his grandchildren,
lost one in this way. In his rage and grief he exclaimed, “You may as
well take the other!” And his suggestion was cheerfully complied with.
Another sufferer said, “That watch will be good for nothing without the
key. Won’t you stop and take it?” “Thank you,” said the soldier; and he
went off, proudly winding his new chronometer.
A few saved their watches by the use of a little artifice. “What’s the
time?” cried a soldier, stopping a ready-witted gentleman. “You’re too
late; I was just asked that question,” was the opportune reply. Another
looked up where the city hall clock stood until brought down by the
fire, and replied to the question of time, “The clock has been burned,
you see.”
The women of Columbia have the credit of exhibiting great courage and
presence of mind, under these trying circumstances. Occasionally,
however, they were taken by surprise. I have related how one lady lost
her silver and fine old wine. Another was suddenly accosted by a soldier
who thrust his revolver under her bonnet: “Your money! your watch!” “O,
my soul!” she exclaimed, “I have no watch, no money, except what’s tied
’round my waist!” “I’ll relieve you of that,” said the soldier, ripping
up her stays with his knife.
The soldiers were full of cheerful remarks about the fire. “What curious
people you are!” said one, looking at the ruins. “You run up your
chimneys before you build your houses.”
Although some of the guards were faithless, others—and I hope a majority
of them—executed their trust with fidelity.
Some curious incidents occurred. One man’s treasure, concealed by his
garden fence, escaped the soldiers’ divining-rods, but was afterwards
discovered by a hitched horse pawing the earth from the buried box. Some
hidden guns had defied the most diligent search, until a chicken, chased
by a soldier, ran into a hole beneath a house. The soldier, crawling
after, and putting in his hand for the chicken, found the guns.
A soldier, passing in the streets, and seeing some children playing with
a beautiful little greyhound, amused himself by beating its brains out.
Another soldier with a kinder heart, to comfort them, told them not to
cry, and proposed to have a funeral over the remains of their little
favorite. He put it in a box, and went to bury it in the garden,
directly _on the spot where the family treasures were concealed_. The
proprietor, in great distress of mind, watched the proceedings, fearful
of exciting suspicion if he opposed it, and trembling lest each thrust
of the spade should reveal the secret. A corner of the box was actually
laid bare, when, kicking some dirt over it, he said, “There, that will
do, children!” and hastened the burial. The soldier no doubt thought he
betrayed a good deal of emotion at the grave of a lap-dog. The hole was
filled up, but the danger was not yet over, for there was a chance that
the next soldier who came that way might be attracted by the
fresh-looking earth, and go to digging.
Some treasures were buried in cemeteries, but they did not always escape
the search of the soldiers, who showed a strong mistrust of new-made
graves.
It is curious to consider what has become of all the jewels and finery
of which our armies robbed the people of the South. On two or three
occasions gentlemen of respectability have shown me, with considerably
more pride than I could have felt under the circumstances, vases and
trinkets which they “picked up when they were in the army.” Some of
these curiosities have been heard from by their rightful owners. A ring,
worn by a lady of Philadelphia, was last summer recognized by a Southern
gentleman, who remarked that he thought he had seen it before. “Very
possibly,” was the reply; “it was given me by Captain ——, of General
Sherman’s staff; and it was presented to him by a lady of Columbia for
his efforts in saving her property.” But the lady of Columbia, who knew
nothing of any such efforts in her behalf, avers that the gallant
captain stole the ring.[22]
Mrs. Minegault, daughter of the late Judge Huger, of Charleston,—the
same gentleman who was associated with Dr. Bollmann in the attempted
rescue of Lafayette from the dungeons of Olmütz,—while on a visit to New
York last summer, was one Sunday morning kneeling in Grace Church, when
she saw upon the fair shoulders of a lady kneeling before her, a shawl
which had been lost when her plantation, between Charleston and
Savannah, was plundered by the Federals. Her attention being thus
singularly attracted, she next observed on the lady’s arm a bracelet
which was taken from her at the same time. This was to her a very
precious souvenir, for it had been presented to her by her father, and
it contained his picture. The services ended, she followed the lady
home, and rang at the door immediately after she had entered. Asking to
see the lady of the house, she was shown into the parlor, and presently
the lady appeared, with the shawl upon her shoulders and the bracelet on
her arm. Frankly the visitor related the story of the bracelet, and at
once the wearer restored it to her with ample apologies and regrets. The
visitor, quite overcome by this generosity, and delighted beyond measure
at the recovery of the bracelet, had not the heart to say a word about
the shawl, but left it in the possession of the innocent wearer.
I talked with some good Columbians who expressed the most violent hatred
of the Yankees, for the ruin of their homes. Others took a more
philosophical view of the subject. This difference was thus explained to
me by Governor Orr’s private secretary, an intelligent young man, who
had been an officer in the Confederate service:—
“People who were not in the war cannot understand or forgive these
things. But those who have been in the army know what armies are; they
know that, under the same circumstances, they would have done the same
things.”[23]
I also observed that those whose losses were greatest were seldom those
who complained most. Mayor Gibbes lost more cotton than any other
individual in the Confederacy. Sherman burned for him two thousand and
seven hundred bales, besides mills and other property. Yet he spoke of
these results of the war without a murmur.
He censured Sherman severely, however, for the destitution in which he
left the people of Columbia. “I called on him to relieve the starving
inhabitants he had burned out of their homes. He gave us four hundred
head of refuse cattle, but he gave us nothing to feed them, and a
hundred and sixty of them died of starvation before they could be
killed. For five weeks afterwards, twenty-five hundred people around
Columbia lived upon nothing but loose grain picked up about the camps,
where the Federal horses had been fed. A stranger,” he added, “cannot be
made to understand the continued destitution and poverty of the people
of this district. If a tax should now be assessed upon them of three
dollars per head, there would not be money enough in the district to pay
it. Ordinarily, our annual taxes in this city have been forty thousand
dollars. This year they have dropped down to eighteen hundred dollars.”
South Carolina College is a striking illustration of the effect the war
has had upon the institutions of learning at the South. Formerly it had
about two hundred and fifty students; it has now but eighteen. The State
appropriated annually sixty-five thousand dollars for its benefit; this
year a nominal appropriation of eight thousand dollars was made, to pay
the salaries of the professors, but when I was in Columbia they had not
been able to get that. One, a gentleman of distinguished learning, said
he had not had ten dollars in his possession since Sherman visited them.
Of the desolation and horrors our army left behind it, no description
can be given. Here is a single instance. At a factory on the Congaree,
just out of Columbia, there remained, for six weeks, a pile of
sixty-five dead horses and mules, shot by Sherman’s men. It was
impossible to bury them, all the shovels, spades, and other farming
implements of the kind having been carried off or destroyed.
Columbia must have been a beautiful city, judged by its ruins. The
streets were broad and well shaded. Many fine residences still remain on
the outskirts, but the entire heart of the city, within their circuit,
is a wilderness of crumbling walls, naked chimneys, and trees killed by
the flames. The fountains of the desolated gardens are dry, the basins
cracked; the pillars of the houses are dismantled, or overthrown; the
marble steps are broken; but all these attest the wealth and elegance
which one night of fire and orgies sufficed to destroy. Fortunately the
unfinished new State House, one of the handsomest public edifices in the
whole country, received but trifling injury.
Not much was doing to rebuild any but the business portion of the city.
Only on Main Street were there many stores or shanties going up.
-----
Footnote 19:
_Daily Phœnix._
Footnote 20:
_Daily Phœnix._
Footnote 21:
Nichols’s _Story of the Great March_.
Footnote 22:
An officer taking his punch (they drink punch in the army when the
coffee ration is exhausted) from an elegantly-chased silver cup, was
saluted thus:—
“Halloa, captain, that’s a gem of a cup. No mark on it; why, where did
you get it?”
“Ye-e-s! that cup? Oh, that was given me by a lady in Columbia for
saving her households gods from destruction.”
An enterprising officer in charge of a foraging party would return to
camp with a substantial family coach, well filled with hams, meal,
etc.
How are you, captain? Where did you pick up that carriage?”
“Elegant vehicle, isn’t it?” was the reply; “that was a gift from a
lady out here whose mansion was in flames. Arrived at the nick of
time—good thing—she said she didn’t need the carriage any
longer—answer for an ambulance one of these days.”
After a while this joke came to be repeated so often that it was
dangerous for any one to exhibit a gold watch, a tobacco-box, any
uncommon utensil of kitchen ware, a new pipe, a guard-chain, or a
ring, without being asked if “a lady at Columbia had presented that
article to him for saving her house from burning.”—_Story of the Great
March._
Footnote 23:
“The grass will grow in the Northern cities, where the pavements have
been worn off by the tread of commerce. We will carry war where it is
easy to advance—where food for the _sword_ and _torch_ await our
armies in the densely populated cities; and though they (the enemy)
may come and spoil our crops, we can raise them as before, while they
cannot rear the cities which took years of industry and millions of
money to build.”—_Jeff Davis in 1861—Speech at Stevenson, Ala._