It is of course impossible to estimate exactly the damage done. A considerable number of important cities
CHARLESTON, S. C.
suffered more or less; but the majority were forgotten in the unusual severity at Charleston. The city appeared as though it had been through a siege, or as if a gigantic charge of dynamite had been exploded beneath it. In all directions might be seen heaps of ruins, houses tottering, cracked, twisted—in all stages of destruction. Ever and anon a fresh shock brought down some crumbling edifice with a sullen roar, and a cloud of stifling dust veiled it from view. The night resounded with the screams of terrified fugitives, the tread of hurrying feet, and the groans and cries of the wounded. The parks swarmed with those in search of a place of safety. Hundreds were bruised or maimed by falling stones and timbers; not a few were killed outright; others, crushed in the wrecks, died a lingering death.
Appeals for aid were promptly responded to by all portions of the country. Even those localities which had themselves suffered severely, came to the aid of the city that had been more sorely stricken.
The greatest injury to life was indirect. Only forty-seven people, it is said, were killed outright. But few houses were left safe; and for a considerable time young and old, rich and poor, the feeble and the strong, were out of doors in tents, booths, or such rude shelters as they could hastily erect. The alarm was perpetuated by occasional recurrence of the shocks during several days. The continued exposure and lack of necessaries created a vast deal of sickness; and the deaths thus indirectly occasioned far exceeded those killed outright.
The damage to buildings in Charleston is estimated at $5,000,000. But in comparison with the whole number injured, comparatively few of the houses were shaken completely down. Hundreds were shaken and shattered to the point of falling, and had to be pulled down as unsafe. The shock was just short of a point where it would have made terrible havoc. If violent enough to overthrow the many houses it merely shattered, its victims would have been numbered by thousands, instead of tens. We may be thankful, with Lord North, that things were no worse.