All during the day thousands of the enemy poured into the city, General Sherman entering about midday. Generals Davis' and Williams' Corps crossed the Saluda and continued up on the western bank of Broad River, one crossing ten, the other twenty-five miles above Columbia. The people of Columbia had hopes of a peaceful occupation of the city, but during the day and along towards nightfall, the threatening attitude of the soldiers, their ominous words, threats of vengeance, were too pretentious for the people to misunderstand or to expect mercy. These signs, threats, and mutterings were but the prelude to that which was to follow.
About 9 o'clock P.M. the alarm of fire was given and the dread sound of the fire bells, mingled with the hum and roar of ten thousand voices and the tread of as many troops hurrying to and fro on their cursed mission, could be heard by the now thoroughly frightened populace. The people, with blanched countenances, set features, looked in mute silence into the faces of each other. All knew and felt, but dared not even to themselves to whisper, the unmistakable truth. Now another alarm, another fire bell mingles its sound with the general chorus of discord, shouts of the soldiery, the frightened cries of the people—jells of the drunken troops all a scathing, maddening [515] turbulance in the crowded streets. A lurid glare shoots up above the housetops, then the cracking and roaring of the dread elements told but too plainly that the beautiful city was soon to be wrapped in flames. The sack and pillage had begun!
Few men being in the city, the women, with rare heroism, sought to save some little necessities of life, only to see it struck to the floor or snatched from their hands and scattered in the streets. Here would be a lone woman hugging an infant to her breast, with a few strips of clothing hanging on her arms; helpless orphans lugging an old trunk or chest, now containing all they could call their own—these would be snatched away, broken open, contents rifled by the drunken soldiers, or if not valuable, trampled under foot.
Soldiers, with axes and hammers, rushed from house to house, breaking in doors, smashing trunks, boxes, bureaus, and robbing them of all that was valuable, then leaving the house in flames. Helpless women, screaming children, babes in the arms, invalids on beds, jolted and jostled against the surging mob—none to help, none to advise—these defenseless sufferers rushed aimlessly about, their sole purpose being to avoid the flames and seek a place of safety. The fires originated principally in the southern section of the city, and as the fire eat its way up, the howling throng followed, driving the innocent and helpless ahead.
As the night wore on, the drunken soldiers, first made intoxicated by the wine in private cellars or the liquors in the government buildings, now became beastly drunk in their glee at the sight of the destruction they had wrought. The women and children followed the dark back-ground of that part of the city not yet in flames. The Federal officers, instead of offering assistance or a helping hand to the ruined and distressed people, added insult to injury by joining in with the private soldiers in the plundering of the city, insulting the women and adding fuel to the flame.
All night long did the flames rage, leap, and lick the clouds as one block of buildings after another fell—food for the devouring elements. This drunken orgies was kept up until their craven hearts were fully satisfied. A few squares in the north-eastern part of the city were left, also several churches, and into these the women and children were huddled and packed, and had to remain for days and some [516] for weeks, almost on the verge of starvation. The Federal commander, through the boundless dictates of his sympathetic heart, after destroying all that fire and rapine could reach, left the starving thousands a few rations each of the plunder he had robbed of the planters in the country.
No vehicles nor horses were left in the city's limits—the bridges burned that led across the river to the west. To the east, Blair's Corps was laying waste everything in their pathway, while above and below the city, for a distance of fifty miles, Sherman had swept the country as bare as if a blight had fallen upon it. How the people of Columbia subsisted during the time they were penned in the city churches and the few buildings left, will ever remain a mystery, and to none so much as the sufferers themselves.
Grains of corn were eagerly picked up in the streets as they dropped from the wagons, and the women and children of the lower class and the negroes flocked to the deserted camps to gather up the crumbs left by the soldiers or the grains trampled under foot of the horses.
Every house in a stretch of fifty miles was entered and insults and indignities offered the defenseless women which would have shamed the savage Turk. Ladies were forced to disclose, at the point of the pistol or the sabre, the hiding-place of their little valuables. Some were forced to cook meals and wait upon the hell hounds, while they regaled themselves upon the choice viands of medicinal wines of the planters' wives. But be it known to their immortal honor, that it was only on the most rare occasions that these proud dames of the South could, either by threat or brutal treatment, be forced to yield to their insolent demands. With the orders from the soldiers to "prepare a meal" or "disclose the whereabouts of their money or valuables," came the threat, "We will burn your house if you do not." But almost invariably came the quick response, "Burn it, burn it, you cowardly wretches, and kill me, if you wish, and all of us, but I will never soil my hands by waiting upon a cowardly Yankee, nor tell you the place of concealment—find it if you can." The soldiers would question the negroes to find out if there were any watches, silver plate, or money belonging to the household; if so, they would, by a system of inquisition, attempt to force the women to give it up, but in vain.