The soldiers of the Fifty-Fourth have proved their prowess on the field of battle; they have met the chivalry of South Carolina face to face, and shown their equality in courage and heroism, and on this ever-memorable day they make manifest to the world their superiority in honor and humanity.
Let the painter picture it. Let the poet rehearse it. With the old flag above them, keeping step to freedom's drum-beat, up the grass-grown streets, past the slave-marts where their families and themselves have been sold in the public shambles, laying aside their arms, working the fire-engines to extinguish the flames, and, in the spirit of the Redeemer of men, saving that which was lost.
"It was the intention of some of our officers to destroy the city," said one of the citizens; "they not only set it on fire, but they double-shotted the guns of the ironclads, and turned them upon the town, but fortunately no one was injured when they exploded."
The lower half of the city was called Gillmore's town by the inhabitants.
We visited the old office of the Mercury, in Broad Street. A messenger sent by the "Swamp Angel" had preceded us, entering the roof, exploding within the chimney, dumping several cart-loads of brickbats and soot into the editorial room, breaking the windows and splintering the doors. It was the room in which Secession had its incubation. The leading rebellious spirits once sat there in their arm-chairs and enthroned King Cotton. They demanded homage to his majesty from all nations. The first shell sent the Mercury up town to a safer locality, but when Sherman began his march into the interior, the Mercury fled into the country to Cheraw, right into his line of advance!
The Courier office in Bay Street had not escaped damage. A shell went down through the floors, ripping up the boards, jarring the plaster from the walls, and exploded in the second story, rattling all the tiles from the roof, bursting out the windows, smashing the composing-stone, opening the whole building to the winds. Another shell had dashed the sidewalk to pieces and blown a passage into the cellar, wide enough to admit a six-horse wagon. Near the Courier office were the Union Bank, Farmers' and Exchange Bank, and Charleston Bank, costly buildings, fitted up with marble mantels, floors of terra-cotta tiles, counters elaborate in carved work, and with gorgeous frescoing on the walls. There, five years ago, the merchants of the city, the planters of the country, the slave-traders, assembled on exchange, talked treason, and indulged in extravagant day-dreams of the future glory of Charleston.
The rooms were silent now, the oaken doors splintered, the frescoing washed from the walls by the rains which dripped from the shattered roof; the desks were kindling-wood, the highly-wrought cornice-work had dropped to the ground, the tiles were ploughed up, the marble mantles shivered, the beautiful plate-glass of the windows was in fragments upon the floor. The banks helped on the Rebellion,—contributed their funds to inaugurate it, and invested largely in the State securities to place the State on a war footing. The three banks named held on January 6, 1862, six hundred and ten thousand dollars' worth of the seven per cent State stock, issued under the act of December, 1861.
The entire amount of the State loan of one million eight hundred thousand dollars issued under that act was taken by the banks of the State. Every bank with the exception of the Bank of Camden and the Commercial Bank of Columbia subscribed to the stock. The seven Charleston banks at this early stage of the war had loaned the State permanently eleven hundred and forty-two thousand dollars.[92]
At this period of the war the State had twenty-seven thousand three hundred and sixty-two troops[93] in the field, out of a white population of two hundred and ninety-one thousand, by the census of 1860,—nearly one half of the voting population, so fiercely burned the fires of Secession. But the flames had reached their whitest heat. Even at that time the people had grown weary of the war, and refused to enlist.
"The activity and energy had been already abstracted," writes the chief of the Military Department of the State; "they had stricken at the sovereignty of the State; ignorance, indolence, selfishness, disaffection, and to some extent disappointed ambition, were combined and made unwittingly to aid and abet the enemy, and to become the coadjutors of Lincoln and all the hosts of abolition myrmidons."[94]