Upon the Altar of the Nation

by Harry S. Stout

  Sherman’s only real adversary was the weather, the worst in a decade.3 Day upon day of rain and mud became a far more serious logistical obstacle than the Confederate army as his troops slogged 425 miles in fifty days. Nonetheless, Sherman’s forces displayed a special animus for the Palmetto State, the “seedbed” of the rebellion. Sherman routinely denounced it as the “hellhole of secession.” Restraints that were minimal in Georgia all but disappeared as Sherman’s hardened veterans marched relentlessly forward.

  Sherman’s main military target was the railroads, but, with all but no opposition, he made military targets only part of his strategy. The utter psychological destruction of the citizenry also figured large in the plan, and for that to be won, the primary target would be the capital city. By Monday, February 13 Sherman knew that only a token defense existed in Columbia under the command of Wade Hampton.

  The Yankees were savoring a go at South Carolina. Sherman was not blind to this, and in a famous aside uttered while the army was still in Georgia, he remarked, “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.” In a typically moralistic and personal statement, he explained that “I”—rather than “we” or “my commander in chief”—“look upon Columbia as quite as bad as Charleston and I doubt if we shall spare her public buildings there as we did at Milledgeville.”4 As the virtual dictator of his army, Sherman now operated free from all moral, no less than military, reviews.

  By February 13, Sherman’s forces could see the city and could not resist firing batteries inside the city’s habitations. Though not massive, the bombardment succeeded in terrorizing the population and discouraging snipers from taking potshots at Yankee troops. All day Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday people flocked to the trains in a “contagious panic” to flee Sherman’s uncontested rumbling legions. Among those fleeing was the New Orleans firebrand Benjamin M. Palmer, whose sermons had done so much to promote Confederate independence.5 On February 17 the scanty Confederate forces ran as well, leaving Sherman to accept the mayor’s surrender and enter the city.

  Already the wind was blowing hard and cotton bales burning, “fired by the rebel cavalry withdrawing from the city that morning.” The city streets teemed with white and black citizens as Sherman assured the mayor that he “had no purpose to injure the private citizens or private property.” As Sherman and Howard came up, the Fifteenth Corps (Sherman’s favorite) marshaled in formation and marched through the town, battle flags whipping in the wind and spirited bands playing “Hail, Columbia” repeatedly. Slaves rushed to the streets, laughing and shouting to the soldiers, “God bless you; I’se free now!” Truly—and nobly—the slaves were indeed freed. Unfortunately, the soldiers had no interest in this aspect of the victory.

  Sherman had little to say years later when he wrote his own account of the occupation of Columbia, mindful of the scandal associated with it. Instead, he concentrated solely on self-congratulatory moral stories. One centered on a female friend from his days with the Third Artillery in 1845. In that year, he gave her a book inscribed and signed. When the Yankees came to pillage, she showed the officer the inscription and, Sherman proudly noted, the officer preserved her property intact. In fact, other events and actions were transpiring in Columbia by then, but Sherman chose not to include them. A second anecdote recounted the story of another woman whose home was burning and how Sherman helped to put the fire out: “I mention these specific facts to show that, personally, I had no malice or desire to destroy that city or its inhabitants, as is generally believed at the South.”6

  This was indeed news to the Confederates. With minimal restraints, soldiers of the less disciplined Seventeenth Corps overran the Fifteenth Corps and got into the liquor stores. Soon after, they invaded civilian houses for foraging.

  During the afternoon soldiers did their best to loot and terrorize citizens, but few reports of physical assaults on white civilians exist. As the wind continued, fires spread throughout the city, especially in the northern section, where the wind blew most directly. Some of the fires occurred accidentally, but others were set deliberately by soldiers moving from house to house, tossing turpentine pots or burning balls of cotton. Freed Union officers from the prisoner-of-war camp at Columbia were especially bent on revenge. Slaves also joined in the rampage, a relatively small measure of retribution for centuries of violent abuse.

  When one woman pleaded with Provost Marshal Jeremiah Jenkins to protect her house, Jenkins replied coldly, “The women of the South kept the war alive—and it is only by making them suffer that we can subdue the men.” Another woman got more of the same for saying she would willingly send her sons to die (in fact two had) if it meant defeat for the enemy. The unsurprised Yankee soldier replied harshly, “Yes, damn you women, you are the ones keeping up the war.”7

  Suffer the women did, and the elderly, and the children, as they fled their burning houses all along Main Street to the unfinished capital building. As the white citizens panicked and the former slaves plundered, the soldiers continued to drink and cheer the destruction of Columbia. Predictably, the scene descended into bedlam. The historian Charles Royster recounts:Some men grew more and more frenzied with the destruction; it became their sole purpose. They seized possessions only to throw them into the flames. While one group gave finery and valuables to passing black people, another pillaged slave quarters and destroyed blacks’ belongings. While one set of men looted banks systematically and extracted buried silver with an experienced touch, others smashed mirrors, slashed paintings, and broke furniture that women had hauled into the streets.... Men who were too drunk and too intent on spreading the fire passed out in burning buildings, and the flames closed over them. A few men murdered.8

  The violence grew so extreme that Sherman was forced to order a roundup of drunken soldiers. In all, 307 were arrested, and in the process, two were killed and thirty more wounded.9

  It is true that rapes of white women were rare (they were Americans after all), and military court-martial records reveal several soldiers executed for rape. But black women did not receive the same mercies—in fact, most of the executions were for the rape of black women.10 For obvious reasons, Union commentators gave little attention to the stories of black women being raped, but the facts were plain. While officers complained, they could do little in practice to prevent the violence. Widespread black illiteracy meant that few black women would record their experiences; others were probably too frightened to witness against their triumphant Yankee assailants. Enough accounts survive, however, to confirm the ways in which some white soldiers viewed slave women as “the legitimate prey of lust.”

  One white woman privy to the violence described Yankee soldiers who stripped black women and then “spanked them around the room.... They violated all the women servants publicly and left them almost dead, unable to move.”11 Other accounts describe similar outrages. On the morning of February 18, black women’s naked bodies lay on the streets of Columbia “bearing the marks of detestable sex crimes.” One older slave was raped by seven Yankees and, with orders to “finish the bitch,” she was drowned in a nearby ditch. 12

  The Confederate writer William Gilmore Simms wrote an account of Columbia’s burning. A native of Charleston, Simms fled the approaching armies of the North and traveled with his family to Columbia, only to arrive one week before Sherman’s Yankees. Though exaggerating the subsequent level of destruction, he had a sound ear for the citizens, especially the women. Despite the taunts and threats, few buckled. Simms observed, “When forced to answer, they did so in monosyllables only, or in brief, stern language, avowed their confidence in the cause of their country, the principles and rights for which their brothers and sons fought, and their faith in the ultimate favor and protection of God.”13 Simms also recognized the differences between white and black women:We should grossly err if, while showing the forbearance of the s
oldiers in respect to our white women, we should convey to any innocent reader the notion that they exhibited a like forbearance in the case of the black. The poor negroes were terribly victimized by their assailants, many of them ... being left in a condition little short of death. Regiments, in successive relays, subjected scores of these poor women to the torture of their embraces. 14

  To be sure, Sherman never issued direct orders to destroy and plunder private property, let alone to rape “liberated” slaves. But any efforts at restraint were ineffectual; in any case, it was well known that if Sherman expected excesses anywhere it was in Columbia. That expectation amounted to de facto permission in the minds of many. For that, Sherman must take the moral responsibility.

  When faced with the ravages of Sherman’s army, Confederate women did not evidence the demoralization that Sherman assumed would ensue. Instead, as with soldiers in the field, after the initial shock their hatreds and determination to fight on were renewed by the violence. Women on farms and refugees in cities may have urged their husbands to desert the war and come home. But women experiencing violence directly urged their soldier husbands to remain in the army and repay the Yankees for their outrages, an eye for an eye.15

  To their credit, not all Union soldiers were so destructive, and some tried valiantly to put out the fires. But most of the more humane soldiers remained in the camp outside of Columbia, leaving the city to the hounds of prey. Throughout, the bands played on and the soldiers complimented themselves on a “good time” had by all. When, near midnight, Sherman walked out into the yard of his “headquarters” to view the city skyline bright with flames, he commented simply, “They have brought it on themselves.”

  The next morning, as Sherman explored the full extent of destruction wrought by his soldiers, he blamed the mayor for not destroying the liquor. Liquor, and not Union soldiers or their officers, was responsible for the destruction. Left unsaid was why ungoverned soldiers had to be in the city in the first place, when the Confederate “army” of eight hundred was long gone to the northeast. Months after the destruction, William Simms asked the same questions:If it could be shown that the whiskey found its way out of stores and cellars, grappled with the soldiers and poured itself down their throats, then they are relieved of [moral] responsibility.... But why did the soldiers prevent the firemen from extinguishing the fire as they strove to do? Why did they cut the hose as soon as it was brought into the streets.... Why did they suffer the men to break into the stores and drink the liquor wherever it was found? And what shall we say to the universal plundering, which was a part of the object attained through the means of fire?16

  In his memoirs, Grant insisted that Confederate soldiers or citizens probably torched Columbia. No doubt there was carelessness on the part of Confederate soldiers bent on destroying the cotton. And alcohol was available for plunder. Add high winds, and all the ingredients for self-exoneration to the smoldering city are there. But the evident satisfaction that Union soldiers took in the destruction and the failure of Union officers to adequately police their own men surely added to the tragedy.

  Remarkably, neither Grant nor Sherman made any moral commentary except to say, in effect, “You deserved it,” no matter what the level of destruction. In a telling concession, Grant argued that even if Sherman’s troops had started the fires or been deliberately delinquent in failing to put them out, they were justified in so doing. In other words, their actions would require no moral defense: “The example set by the Confederates in burning the village of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, a town which was not garrisoned, would seem to make a defence of the act of firing the seat of government of the State most responsible for the conflict then raging, not imperative.”17 In this war, two moral wrongs apparently made one moral right. Sherman agreed: “Though I never ordered [the destruction] and never wished it, I have never shed any tears over the event, because I believe that it hastened what we all fought for, the end of the war.”

  Like Atlanta, Columbia was effectively “not garrisoned,” but the people got what they deserved anyway. It was guilt by geographical association with South Carolina, the state that started the rolling secession of the South. The moral guilt lay not with the Federal soldiers, no matter what they did, but with the people of the South—in particular those of South Carolina. For Sherman, the Confederacy’s Original Sin of secession meant that the entire population deserved wrath and damnation:I know that in the beginning, I too, had the old West Point notion that pillage was a capital crime, and punished it by shooting.... This was a one sided game of war, and many of us ... ceased to quarrel with our men about such minor things, and went in to subdue the enemy, leaving minor depredations to be charged up to the account of the rebels who had forced us into the war, and who deserved all they got and more.18

  Few soldiers expressed reservations over the legitimate “foraging” of South Carolina houses for necessary supplies, and most distanced themselves from pillaging for “trophies,” which was widespread but always relegated to a few rotten apples. Despite explicit prohibitions in Lieber’s Code, the pillaging was systemic, at least in South Carolina, though few owned up to it. Lieber’s Code and Sherman’s orders may have countenanced civilian punishment and exploitation, but many sensed something new and unprecedented was taking place in South Carolina—maybe even something immoral. The historian Jacqueline Glass Campbell recognizes how “the struggle of essentially moral men to come to terms with the violence and terror they were bringing into southern homes suggests that although Sherman’s strategy may have had historical precedent in military terms, in ideological terms, it was understood differently”19

  Even as Columbia burned, Charleston surrendered to General Alexander Schimmelfenning after a bracing bombardment. That left Lee effectively isolated. Northern headlines rejoiced in the capture: “Charleston Evacuated! A Bloodless Victory! Charleston is Ours, God and the right are vindicated.”20 Others praised the cause: “Never since this horrible war began, have we felt more like pouring out our hearts in thanksgiving to God, for any tidings, than for those which we are permitted to announce to-day. Charleston—the birthplace of treason ... is at length in our hands, and the flag of the Union, once more floats over the stronghold of rebellion.“21

  “The Ruins of Charleston, South Carolina,” as seen from the Circular Church. As the “seedbed of rebellion,” no target assumed greater significance for Federal troops than Charleston. After months of bombardment the city was left in ruins and would not be repaired until after the war.

  In none of these accounts was Columbia or the destruction to the city mentioned. Nor was destruction to Charleston mentioned at the time. After the war, a report in a Northern paper revealed the devastation wrought by constant bombardments in the “bloodless victory”:It would be impossible to give even a faint idea of the dreadful effects of this war upon the religious interests of the South. Churches have been shattered and burned, congregations dispersed, benevolent organizations disbanded, Theological Seminaries closed, while many of the clergy wander around without a flock, without a home—some, I fear, without any support except that which may be afforded by the hand of charity.22

  Again, Union commanders evidenced no remorse over civilian casualties. General Halleck, like Sherman, was an early believer in the West Point Code, and, like Sherman, he got over it. In a communique to Sherman, he wrote: “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.”23

  Not all delighted in the devastation. At last the bloodlust seemed to wane as victory loomed imminent. Henry Ward Beecher accepted a Federal invitation to deliver a celebratory sermon to consecrate the redeemed city of Charleston. A writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer was surprised to discover Beecher’s intended theme. According to the account, Beecher informed his congregation of his intent to “appeal for universal unity among the people of both sections,�
� and “now, when it is near its end, his heart yearns for reconciliation with his brethren.” As for Columbia: “Along the seaboard we can give essential relief, but all along the route of Sherman’s army the description given by the prophet is eminently applicable: ‘Before him was the garden of Eden, and behind him was the desert.’ ” In terms of his own intentions for Charleston, “I would be no man’s servant to be the man to go down among them, and when they are burying their dead to taunt them.”24

  PART VIII RECONCILIATION

  MAKING AN END TO BUILD A FUTURE

  CHAPTER 43

  “LET US STRIVE ON TO FINISH THE WORK WE ARE IN”

  Inauguration Day, March 4, 1865, did not begin well. For several days, Washington had been deluged with rain, and the expectant crowd was soon drenched. Worse was yet to come, for first on the agenda was the inauguration of Andrew Johnson as vice president. Suffering the aftereffects of a bout with typhoid fever, Johnson asked for some whiskey to calm his nerves and proceeded to get rip-roaring drunk. After a rambling speech that Lincoln and his administration could barely endure, he was shown to his seat. A mortified Lincoln leaned over to the parade marshal and instructed him: “Do not let Johnson speak outside.”