in the woods; perhaps I had left it at the post before starting. In proof he introduced several dozen witnesses who knew nothing about me or my money; and still others who didn't know much about any thing, and a note from Wooddie, which ran thus: "DEAR MAJOR,-I'm in the enemy's hands. The rations are good, but you know money is almost indispensable to an invalid in the condition I am. To be well I must have delicacies-send some. Please forward this note to Remember me to Mr. Hickey; remember me also to our old driver. "Love to Adeline. "DEAR MAJOR,-I'm in the enemy's hands. Eureka! An acrostic dispatch! The first my mother. She told me that I must beware of strong two words, then the first; the first two twice, then the first read: "Dear Major,-The money drink. I think constantly of her words. is in the well." The good and faithful boy had run to the wagon and thrown the safe into the well when the first gun was fired almost, and was captured there. The last words of the last four lines read: "Beware of Hickey, driver." I showed the dispatch to no one. It was "WOODDIE." "Here," said the Judge Advocate, "he asks for money. How can the defendant have money if he has been robbed? If he has money it must be stolen. As to this clerk being remem-blowing hot through the War Department in bered to Mr. Hickey, Mr. H. repudiates him; but that he should send his regards to a co-conspirator-Beaumont, is natural, and so with regard to Adeline Danton, who might, for aught he knew, be a conspirator too. He relied much on that letter, and would submit the case on the part of the Government. I those days, and healthy blasts they were too. I was to put in my defense the next day. thought Wooddie's letter contained a secret dispatch, and so I took a copy by permission. It was neither blank verse nor poetry. I read every other word, and so on up to every ninth word, which last made this sentence: "Rations indispensable. To please me think Hickey to." Only one thing was clear; he was living on Andersonville fare, poor fellow! and had feared to say so in his letter lest it should be suppressed. I divided my money and sent him half. The next day I put in my defense. It wasn't much. I was sick and discouraged, careless and impu-turn. dent. The Court's dignity was offended. I was thought hardened, and found guilty. I was glad to know the worst, and have Mrs. Danton permitted to return to her home. On the morning of her departure I showed her Wooddie's note, and asked her how she came to know him. "I don't know him," said she. "But he sends you his love," I replied. "It must be some more favored Adeline," said she. I had evidence sufficient to convict young Hickey of the charge against me; to wit, conspiring with the enemy, one Beaumont, a spy, to rob the United States of half a million of dollars. He was arrested, and the papers belonging to Beaumont (given me by Aunt Sarah), with others found near the house, were put in evidence. Indeed, Aunt Sarah herself came forward and swore to some very curious and stunning things. Hickey and Beaumont had been engaged in a "But there is no other in the world that I robbery some time before, and Beaumont havknow," I replied. ing done most of the work claimed most of the "Well," said she, "I'm glad some one loves money. They had quarreled; Beaumont keepme, and I can't do less than send mine in re-ing all the money. Hickey, hearing that his unturn; and if he or you will come to my house cle was an officer, had come through the lines to again, I hope you'll meet not quite so warm but get a place under him. Beaumont had been a a much more hospitable reception than you did doctor and a gentleman. He married Adeline the first night." Danton six years before, and they had a boy, the very image of Adeline. The Doctor drank, gambled, and finally became such a villain in many ways that she got a divorce from him, and sent her boy inside our lines. His father was roaming up and down the country as a driver, looking for the child, and picking up booty, when he fell in with a rogue in the city, who put him to watching the paymasters from the old, dingy building where I first saw him. He found Hickey. They made up the old quarrel "Well," said I, forcing a smile, "expect us when I have finished my time at the Dry Tortugas.' Good-by." She shook her head as the ambulance rolled away, and I saw her handkerchief up to her face-thinking of my sentence, poor girl! It might yet be disapproved, and I restored to duty, so I went back to study over the note. Adeline must be the key. It had seven letters, but every seventh word meant nothing. Finally, I transcribed it into lines of seven words: VOL. XXXIII.-No. 197.-U u They agreed to rob me which are the result of deductions from unsound premises. After General Sherman had promised Mayor on the road with us. and divide the spoil; but as Hickey got no booty he thought Beaumont had been false again, and accused me of conspiring with him as a spy-Goodwyn that "the people and their houses thus revenging himself on Beaumont and injuring me. It came out that Hickey had actually furnished Beaumont the pass, stolen from his uncle, to go outside our lines and gather a band the day previous to my leaving; that Hickey was the one who sawed off the ambulance axletrec; and that Beaumont was close by when I was attacked. Hickey was sentenced to imprison-had visited much in the best families in Caroment during the war. should be respected," it would indeed be making him out a deliberate falsifier of his word to charge him with the burning of Columbia. It is not to be supposed that a gentleman educated at West Point, accustomed to the society of American army officers who have been proverbial for their high sense of honor, and who lina, could have assured Mayor Goodwyn (as he unquestionably did) "that the town should be protected; that he might retire to his bed, and rest quietly after the fatigues of the day; that he [Sherman] would take care of the city, which was much safer in his hands than it could be in the hands of the Mayor," and then give orders to turn and pillage the very city he had promised to protect. To suppose this of General Sherman is too monstrous a libel on human nature, and we must find out some other hypothesis on which to base a probable solution of this vexed question. And yet there are citizens of Columbia who believe Sherman capable of this enormous baseness; who believe that he treacherously lulled them into a false security by his promises of Well, in the merry month of October, I went down into the Horse Creek region with plenty of money and plenty of men. We smoked, we shouted, we sang, and reveled in the sunshine and bracing air like boys let loose from school. Not two hundred rods from Horse Creek Crossing we were popped at from the bush. In a moment after a powerful black horse bounded into the road ahead of us and disappeared. His saddle was empty and bridle broken. We search-protection, and then fired the town to give his ed the woods and found where the horse had stood under a tree, and not three rods off lay Beaumont with his neck broken. His head had been dashed against a lower limb when the horse started. We buried him where he lay. The fences about the old house were burned, and the ground trampled into mud by horses' feet. It looked gloomy enough. Adeline had gone North. "See here," said the Major, who had been relating this story, pointing to the garden behind his office, "The Sequel." There was Aunt Sarah, and the handsome boy, who looked so much like his mother; and the beautiful bright face of the woman who used to be Adeline Danton was turned toward the office. Wooddie was junior partner, in the frontroom smoking, with old Toby under the table as deaf as a post-military or otherwise. soldiers an excuse for plundering the burning buildings. They believe that the soldiers had been promised the pillage of Columbia from the time they left Savannah; and that General Sherman knew the feeling which existed, and of their intention to take ample vengeance on the inhabitants of the capital of South Carolina. They believe that certain rockets (I saw them myself), which were sent up from the neighborhood of head-quarters about 8 o'clock of the evening of the 17th of February, were the sig nals for the burning and plundering to begin. They believe that many of the officers, who had been profuse in their assurances of safety and protection, suddenly changed their tone on the appearance of these rockets, and warned many of the inhabitants of the approaching ruin. Without being able to account for these rockets, or to explain their purpose (which has never yet been done, so far as I have heard), I still cling to the belief that General Sherman intended to protect the persons and private property of the citizens, and that both he and his officers, who so repeatedly assured the citizens of their HE article on the Burning of Columbia in intention to protect them, were honest and sin THE BURNING OF COLUMBIA was evidently written by an officer who was de- himself, and many of his officers, labored hard sirous of telling the truth, but who has fallen to fulfill the assurances they had given; but into some errors which ought to be corrected. from causes which he and they were unable at The writer of this was a citizen of Columbia, the time to control the town was fired and plunand, like the author alluded to, an eye-witness dered by the soldiers of Sherman's army; and of that unhappy event, and most cheerfully that, when the fire (which was begun in many bears his testimony to the general truthfulness places at the same time) had gotten fairly under of the narrative. But as there are some inac-way, no human power could have stopped it— curacies which would readily be admitted by not all the men of Sherman's vast army could the author if he were here, so there are others have checked that raging fire during that tor nado of wind which swept over our devoted city | stored in various parts of the city when Sherfrom 5 o'clock of the evening of the 17th of February to 5 o'clock of the morning of the 18th. There was no need for any burning flakes of "cotton lint, and tinder" to ignite the dwellings of Columbia, when "burning boards and shingles" were carried in a perfect shower of fire from square to square, spreading the terrible conflagration beyond the power of mortal man to arrest it. The author of the article in question is certainly wrong in saying the wind was from the south, and that the southwestern portion of the city was destroyed. This error is easily accounted for. Columbia is situated on the eastern side of the Congaree River, which forms the western boundary of the corporate limits of the city. The general course of Sherman's march was toward the north, and as the army crossed the river about two miles above Columbia the faces of the soldiers were turned south when they entered the city, and any one might have easily mistaken the points of the compass from this reversal of the line of march. There were but three places within the city of Columbia where there was any fire during the whole of Friday, and for many hours after the occupation of the town by the Federal Army. These were the Charlotte Railroad dépôt, on the extreme eastern side of the city; the Charleston Railroad dépôt, on the extreme west; and in the main street near the State House, where some bales of cotton had been fired about 11 o'clock in the morning, it is thought by accident. The only importance which attaches to this error consists in the fact that, as the wind was from the north instead of the south, it was utterly impossible that the northern part of the city could have ignited from fires in the southern portion, with the wind blowing a gale from the north. There is no exaggeration in the author's eloquent description of this terrible fire: "The northern and western sky was not only all aflame, but the air was filled with myriad sparks and burning brands. They fell upon the wooden house-tops; they dashed against the windowpanes, lurid with reflected light; they fell in showers into the garden and among the trees; they mingled with the eddying dust which whirled along the street. It was the rain of fire, which is so sublimely expressed in music, in that grand oratorio-Israel in Egypt.' Such was the terrific force of this furious wind that it was not possible for the conflagration to have spread in any other direction than from north to south. And in this direction the city was doomed, no matter what efforts were being made to save it, so long as the wind prevailed and there were buildings in its path. man's army approached Columbia. To prevent its falling into the hands of the enemy there was an order issued for its destruction. But to prevent the burning of the cotton from destroying the buildings in which it was stored a great part of this cotton was taken out of the various store-houses and piled in the middle of the streets, which are every where 100 feet wide. As before stated, one lot of this cotton was placed in the main street, not far from the State House; and this cotton was fired, and the fire put out, about 11 o'clock in the morning. The rest of the cotton was not burned until the evening; and some of it, which was a little out of the line of the fire, was not burned till Sabbath morning. At 4 o'clock on Friday afternoon there was not a vestige of fire remaining within the limits of Columbia, save, perhaps, at the two dépôts before named, and they were so situated that no wind from the north could possibly spread the flames. At this hour I saw the smoke and flame from two large buildings about a mile from the city, and on inquiry found they proceeded from the dwellings of General Hampton and George A. Trenholm, the Confederate Secretary of the Treasury; and a short time after the beautiful residence of General Hampton's sisters, called Millwood, was burned to the ground, with all its valuable furniture and numerous works of art. It was not until nearly 8 o'clock in the evening that the general conflagration began, and at that time General Hampton was twenty miles from Columbia. About the same time that General Sherman's advanced column marched down the main street I saw General Hampton, at the head of a detachment of his cavalry, ride down the Asylum Road, which leads toward Winnsborough, while another detachment, headed by Colonel Rutlege, filed off toward Camden. This was, as near as I can remember, about half past 9 or 10 o'clock on Friday morning, fully ten hours before the burning of Columbia had begun. But why should General Hampton be charged with "adding a deeper shame to a dishonored name" because he has sought to relieve his name from the deep disgrace of having destroyed his native town? General Sherman had sought to throw this responsibility upon him, and surely he had a right to exculpate himself, and put this responsibility upon the proper persons. Is there any such difference in the standing and character of these two gentlemen that one of them may do what the other may not do without "dishonoring his name?" General Sherman says, in his "well-considered and remarkable report:" "Without hesitation I charge General Wade Hampton with having burned his own city of Columbia, not with malicious But what had General Hampton to do with the burning of Columbia? All that General Sherman alleges against him is that he distrib-intent, nor as a manifestation of 'Roman stoiuted combustible materials-"cotton lint, and tinder"-about the city, which spread the fire after the burning had begun. There were many hundreds of bales of cotton cism,' but from folly and want of sense." And this, according to the article in question, is to be "the verdict of history." In his "well-considered and remarkable" let torch applied to their own dwellings by the soldiers of General Sherman, and in some instances they were led on by men whose garb indicated that they had escaped from the prisoners' camp. ter to the Hon. Reverdy Johnson, General | in Columbia that they were present and saw the Hampton charges the burning of Columbia upon the soldiers of General Sherman's army. And surely, when impartial history comes to be written, it will be much easier to put the responsibility of the destruction of Columbia upon the General who commanded the army which captured and occupied the town than upon that other General, who merely distributed combustible materials, which would have been entirely harmless but for the high wind on that fatal night and the igniting torches of General Sherman's soldiers. I have no disposition to detract from the very great merit of General Sherman. His memorable march from Atlanta to Savannah, and from Savannah across the State of South Carolina to Fayetteville, did most unquestionably put an end to the war. It is true General Lee surrendered to General Grant, but it is equally true that it was Sherman's cutting off his supplies which compelled the surrender. Nor does our author relate a tithe of the courtesies and kindnesses shown by General Sherman to those families in Columbia with whom he had previously been acquainted, nor the many instances of perilous exertion made by his officers, and occasionally by his privates, to save our women from insult and our property from destruction. Among these honorable men let me mention the names of Colonel Stone, Captains M'Queen and Symonds of Iowa, Captain White of Indiana, and Guthrie of Michigan. There were many more, and I greatly regret that their names have faded from my memory-men whose humanity kept pace with their patriotism, and who did not believe in this warring upon women and children, old men and maidens. These gentlemen were mortified and distressed beyond expression at the apparent want of good faith, after their repeated assurances that no harm should happen to persons and private property. General Sherman has himself declared that his policy and his duty required that his march through South Carolina should be with fire and sword, and that a stern military necessity made it his painful duty to burn and destroy what his army could not carry away. This policy was carried out from the hour he crossed the Savannah River till he reached the boundary line of North Carolina. And after having burned the village of Grahamville, and indeed every planter's house in the rich district of Beaufort, nearly all of the villages of Bambury, Barnwell, Lexington, and Orangeburg, it does seem passing strange that he should wish to throw the responsibility of burning Columbia on General Hampton. But who did burn and pillage Columbia? It was done by the soldiers of General Sherman's army, aided and abetted by some of the escaped prisoners, who had concealed themselves in the Asylum yard when their main body had been ordered to Danville. I have been assured by many of the most respectable men and women I can not believe that General Sherman was cognizant of their intentions, or winked at their insubordination, or, least of all, ordered the burning and sacking of Columbia, after having vol unteered to the Mayor his powerful protection. This would have been such a miracle of baseness and treachery, such a stain, not only on himself but upon the American character, that it may be set down as simply impossible. One remark of the author of the paper in question has much force, and merits a passing observation. Many a Confederate gentleman, glowing with patriotism, boasted of the sacrifices he would make when the Yankee invader put his foot on our "sacred soil." In the author's language, "they would immolate themselves on the ruins of their homes," "yet when the Federal army did appear these personages were as eager to preserve their homes and household lares as any Jew or Scotchman among them." It is not from loud-mouthed and blustering patriots, either North or South, that we may look for great self-sacrifices. Men who boast much are always slow in their performances; and it will hold good at the South, as well as every where, that those who promise "to die in the last ditch" are seldom to be found when the last ditch is reached. It is mortifying that Southern gentlemen could have been so unwise as to boast of their "immolation." It is more creditable to their "second sober thought" that, when all hope of success was gone, they should have striven to save from the universal wreck such of their household goods as General Sherman's desolating march had left to them. At the same time it can not be denied that no people ever made greater sacrifices for the cause they had espoused. They have suffered entire ruin for this cause, and proved their devotion to their principles by a heroism which has few parallels in history. The author of the August article has alluded to "Mr. Wade Hampton's dishonored name." When and where was General Hampton's name ever dishonored? If the author simply means that every name connected with "the Great Rebellion" is dishonored, then nothing more need be said. The same stigma which rests upon Kossuth in Hungary, upon Robert Emmett in Ireland, on Russell and Sydney in England, all unsuccessful rebels, rests on Wade Hampton. The same dishonor, and no other, which would have rested on the venerated names of Washington and Hancock, had the American Revolution been a failure, rests now on the names of Lee, Johnston, Beauregard, and Hampton. The disgrace which attaches to their names would win for them the highest consideration in any foreign country, and in one-third of our own land. If the author means any thing else, he surely has not informed himself of Wade Hampton's | could not escape military service, and he must position in his native State. Here in Colum- [do battle for or against his native State. bia he is known as the quiet, unpretending gentleman, the good master, the good citizen, the good man-courteous, kind, considerate, and brave. His escutcheon is untarnished, his good name a household word, his reputation the common property of our citizens. Without having been an original secessionist, he sprang into the saddle when his country demanded his services, and devoted himself, his sons, and his fortune to the Southern cause. A believer in the doctrine of State Rights and State Sovereignty, he knew no authority but the State in which he lived, and such government as she chose to institute. Being in the vigor of manhood he The foregoing paper, by James McCarter, Esq., of Columbia, South Carolina, is designed mainly to corroborate, but partly to supplement and partly to correct, the account of the burning of Columbia by Major Nichols, contained in this Magazine for August. A personal acquaintance of many years with both of these gentlemen warrants us in vouching that neither of them is capable of making any intentional misstatement of facts. We think, how ever, that Major Nichols, being a member of Sherman's staff, and on active duty during the day, had better opportunities for observing, and that upon the few points where they differ his account is to be received. I do not intend to enter upon the discussion of the "vexed question" as to where a man's allegiance is due. This question has been discussed on many a battle-field, and it has been decided at the point of the bayonet and at the cannon's mouth; and General Hampton, in common with the great mass of his countrymen, submits to the settlement. has literally beaten his sword into a plowshare, and with his former slaves (now freedmen) he has become a tiller of the ground. Let no man attach dishonor to his name. His record up to the present time is made. The future depends upon himself. He observed during the night, after the conflagration had fairly got under headway. Then the heated air would rise upward, and the air would rush in from every direction to supply the vacuum thus created. To one stationed north of this centre, as we presume Mr. McCarter was, the wind would come from the north; to one south, from the south; and so through every point of the compass. But the light burning material, whether cotton or shingles, borne upward by this ascending current, would, when released from its influence, fall in every direction, and so spread the flames to every quarter; the prevailing direction being that of the main current of the gale, which was from the southwest, as stated by the Phanix, to which, says this account, "we owe the preservation of the portions of the city lying west of Assembly Street." Mr. McCarter also seems to us to be certainly in error when he says that, with the exception of the two railroad dépôts, the burning of which he affirms had nothing to do with the general conflagration, there was but one place "where there was any fire during the whole of Friday, and for many hours after the occupation of the town by the Federal army,” this place being in the main street, near the Capitol, where "some bales of cotton had been fired at about 11 o'clock," the fire, as he afterward says, being "put out at about 11 o'clock." That is, it lasted only a short time. But Major Nichols, during the day, saw the air filled with "smoking flakes of cotton, catching in the branches of trees already white with cotton, or falling upon the shingled roofs of houses," and late in the afternoon, but before evening, he "passed through the main street of the city, and observed that the smoke still ascended from Mr. McCarter undertakes to correct Major Nichols as to the direction of the wind on Friday the 17th of February. Nichols says it was a "southern wind," not necessarily directly from the south, but from a southerly point. McCarter says that it was "blowing a fierce gale from the north," and offers as an explanation of the manner in which Nichols was led into error, that Sherman's column had, without noticing it, changed its direction of march from north to south. We can not accept this explanation, because Sherman in his Report says expressly that he approached Columbia from the north. Nichols being on his staff could not but be aware of the direction of this advance, and he could not be mistaken as to whether this fierce gale was blowing upon his back or in his face. He says, also, that in the afternoon "the air was filled with dust and twigs and smoking flakes of cotton flying over our heads,' which could not have been the case if the wind was from the north. Moreover, every account which we have seen represents the wind that day to have been from a "southern" direction. Thus the Co-Wade Hampton's cotton bales." So Sherman saw, lumbia Daily Phanix contained an account of the "Sack and Destruction of Columbia," which was afterward republished in pamphlet form. It is written in a spirit of bitter hostility to the Union army. This account says: "The winds had been high throughout the day, and steadily prevailed from southwest by west, and bore the flames eastward." This discrepancy is of some importance, because if, as stated by Mr. McCarter, the gale was from the north, a conflagration from the cotton which was burning in the southern part of the city could not have spread to the north, as the fire certainly did, and therefore must have arisen from fires set to the north of this burning cotton. We explain the error into which we think Mr. McCarter has fallen by supposing that he writes from recollection of what he as he entered the city, "some of these piles of cotton burning, and especially one in the very heart of the city, near the Court-house, but the fire was partially subdued by the labor of our soldiers." The truth seems to be that during the whole day the fire in these bales of cotton, only "partially subdued," was still smouldering. Fire in a tightly compressed bale of cotton is almost unextinguishable. It will smoulder for hours after it appears to be put out, and then will suddenly burst into flame. With the air thus filled with flakes from the opened bales, many of them burning and lodging upon trees and roofs already white with cotton flakes, it is incredible that during this whole day there should have been no fires except this one, which, according to Mr. McCarter, was extinguished at about 11 o'clock. |