Numbers of the poorer classes took advantage of this confusion to plunder the city. On Friday morning, they broke into the South Carolina Railroad Depot, which was “crowded with the stores of merchants and planters, trunks of treasure, innumerable wares and goods of fugitives, all of great value. It appears that among its contents were some kegs of powder. The plunderers paid, and suddenly, the penalties of their crime. Using their lights freely and hurriedly, they fired a train of powder leading to the kegs.” A fearful explosion followed, destructive to property and life.[[1]]
Early on Friday the Confederate quartermaster and commissary stores were thrown open to the people. Old men, women, children, and negroes, loaded themselves with plunder. Wheeler’s cavalry rushed in for their share, and several troopers were seen riding off “with huge bales of cotton on their saddles.”[[20]]
The same day—Friday, February 17th—Sherman entered Columbia. To the anxious mayor he said: “Not a finger’s breadth of your city shall be harmed. You may lie down and sleep, satisfied that your town will be as safe in my hands as in your own.” That night Columbia was destroyed.
It is still a question, who is responsible for this calamity. General Sherman denies that he authorized it, and we are bound to believe him. But did he not permit it? or was it not in his power at least to have prevented it? General Howard is reported to have said to a clergyman of the place, that no orders were given to burn Columbia, but the soldiers had got the impression that its destruction would be acceptable at head-quarters. Were the soldiers correct in their impression?
A member of General Sherman’s staff speaks thus of the origin of the fire:—
“I am quite sure that it originated in sparks flying from the hundreds of bales of cotton which the Rebels had placed along the middle of the main street, and fired as they left the city. Fire from a tightly compressed bale of cotton is unlike that of a more open material, which burns itself out. The fire lies smouldering in a bale of cotton long after it appears to be extinguished; and in this instance, when our soldiers supposed they had extinguished the fire, it suddenly broke out again with the most disastrous effect.
“There were fires, however, which must have been started independent of the above-named cause. The source of these is ascribed to the desire for revenge from some two hundred of our prisoners, who had escaped from the cars as they were being conveyed from this city to Charlotte, and with the memories of long sufferings in the miserable pens I visited yesterday on the other side of the river, sought this means of retaliation. Again it is said that the soldiers who first entered the town, intoxicated with success and a liberal supply of bad liquor, which was freely distributed among them by designing citizens, in an insanity of exhilaration set fire to unoccupied houses.”[[21]]
It is also probable that fires were set by citizen marauders. But is this the whole truth with regard to the burning of Columbia?
I visited the place nearly a year after its great disaster, when the passions of men had had time to cool a little. Through the courtesy of Governor Orr I made acquaintance with prominent and responsible citizens. To these gentlemen—especially to Mr. J. G. Gibbes, the present mayor of the city—I am indebted for the following statements and anecdotes.
Early in the evening, as the inhabitants, quieted by General Sherman’s assurance, were about retiring to their beds, a rocket went up in the lower part of the city. Another in the centre, and a third in the upper part of the town, succeeded. Dr. R. W. Gibbes, father of the present mayor, was in the street talking, near one of the Federal guards, who exclaimed, on seeing the signals, “My God! I pity your city!” Mr. Goodwyn, who was mayor at the time, reports a similar remark from an Iowa soldier. “Your city is doomed! These rockets are the signal!” Immediately afterwards fires broke out in twenty different places.