Although some of the guards were faithless, others—and I hope a majority of them—executed their trust with fidelity.
Some curious incidents occurred. One man’s treasure, concealed by his garden fence, escaped the soldiers’ divining-rods, but was afterwards discovered by a hitched horse pawing the earth from the buried box. Some hidden guns had defied the most diligent search, until a chicken, chased by a soldier, ran into a hole beneath a house. The soldier, crawling after, and putting in his hand for the chicken, found the guns.
A soldier, passing in the streets, and seeing some children playing with a beautiful little greyhound, amused himself by beating its brains out. Another soldier with a kinder heart, to comfort them, told them not to cry, and proposed to have a funeral over the remains of their little favorite. He put it in a box, and went to bury it in the garden, directly on the spot where the family treasures were concealed. The proprietor, in great distress of mind, watched the proceedings, fearful of exciting suspicion if he opposed it, and trembling lest each thrust of the spade should reveal the secret. A corner of the box was actually laid bare, when, kicking some dirt over it, he said, “There, that will do, children!” and hastened the burial. The soldier no doubt thought he betrayed a good deal of emotion at the grave of a lap-dog. The hole was filled up, but the danger was not yet over, for there was a chance that the next soldier who came that way might be attracted by the fresh-looking earth, and go to digging.
Some treasures were buried in cemeteries, but they did not always escape the search of the soldiers, who showed a strong mistrust of new-made graves.
It is curious to consider what has become of all the jewels and finery of which our armies robbed the people of the South. On two or three occasions gentlemen of respectability have shown me, with considerably more pride than I could have felt under the circumstances, vases and trinkets which they “picked up when they were in the army.” Some of these curiosities have been heard from by their rightful owners. A ring, worn by a lady of Philadelphia, was last summer recognized by a Southern gentleman, who remarked that he thought he had seen it before. “Very possibly,” was the reply; “it was given me by Captain ——, of General Sherman’s staff; and it was presented to him by a lady of Columbia for his efforts in saving her property.” But the lady of Columbia, who knew nothing of any such efforts in her behalf, avers that the gallant captain stole the ring.[[22]]
Mrs. Minegault, daughter of the late Judge Huger, of Charleston,—the same gentleman who was associated with Dr. Bollmann in the attempted rescue of Lafayette from the dungeons of Olmütz,—while on a visit to New York last summer, was one Sunday morning kneeling in Grace Church, when she saw upon the fair shoulders of a lady kneeling before her, a shawl which had been lost when her plantation, between Charleston and Savannah, was plundered by the Federals. Her attention being thus singularly attracted, she next observed on the lady’s arm a bracelet which was taken from her at the same time. This was to her a very precious souvenir, for it had been presented to her by her father, and it contained his picture. The services ended, she followed the lady home, and rang at the door immediately after she had entered. Asking to see the lady of the house, she was shown into the parlor, and presently the lady appeared, with the shawl upon her shoulders and the bracelet on her arm. Frankly the visitor related the story of the bracelet, and at once the wearer restored it to her with ample apologies and regrets. The visitor, quite overcome by this generosity, and delighted beyond measure at the recovery of the bracelet, had not the heart to say a word about the shawl, but left it in the possession of the innocent wearer.
I talked with some good Columbians who expressed the most violent hatred of the Yankees, for the ruin of their homes. Others took a more philosophical view of the subject. This difference was thus explained to me by Governor Orr’s private secretary, an intelligent young man, who had been an officer in the Confederate service:—
“People who were not in the war cannot understand or forgive these things. But those who have been in the army know what armies are; they know that, under the same circumstances, they would have done the same things.”[[23]]
I also observed that those whose losses were greatest were seldom those who complained most. Mayor Gibbes lost more cotton than any other individual in the Confederacy. Sherman burned for him two thousand and seven hundred bales, besides mills and other property. Yet he spoke of these results of the war without a murmur.
He censured Sherman severely, however, for the destitution in which he left the people of Columbia. “I called on him to relieve the starving inhabitants he had burned out of their homes. He gave us four hundred head of refuse cattle, but he gave us nothing to feed them, and a hundred and sixty of them died of starvation before they could be killed. For five weeks afterwards, twenty-five hundred people around Columbia lived upon nothing but loose grain picked up about the camps, where the Federal horses had been fed. A stranger,” he added, “cannot be made to understand the continued destitution and poverty of the people of this district. If a tax should now be assessed upon them of three dollars per head, there would not be money enough in the district to pay it. Ordinarily, our annual taxes in this city have been forty thousand dollars. This year they have dropped down to eighteen hundred dollars.”