When the fire was well under way, Sherman appeared on the scene, but gave no orders. Nor was it necessary, for Generals Howard, Logan, Woods, and others were laboring earnestly to prevent the spread of the conflagration. By their efforts and by the change and subsidence of wind, the fire in the early morning of February 18 was stayed. Columbia, wrote General Howard, was little “except a blackened surface peopled with numerous chimneys and an occasional house that had been spared as if by a miracle.” Science, history, and art might mourn at the loss they sustained in the destruction of the house of Dr. Gibbes, an antiquary and naturalist, a scientific acquaintance, if not a friend, of Agassiz. His large library, portfolios of fine [p313] engravings, two hundred paintings, a remarkable cabinet of Southern fossils, a collection of sharks’ teeth, “pronounced by Agassiz to be the finest in the world,” relics of our aborigines and others from Mexico, “his collection of historical documents, original correspondence of the Revolution, especially that of South Carolina,” were all burned.
The story of quelling the disorder is told by General Oliver: “February 18, at 4 A.M., the Third Brigade was called out to suppress riot; did so, killing 2 men, wounding 30 and arresting 370.” It is worthy of note that, despite the reign of lawlessness during the night, very few, if any, outrages were committed on women.
[1] In a letter presented to the Senate of the United States (some while before April 21, 1866) Sherman said, “I saw in your Columbia newspaper the printed order of General Wade Hampton that on the approach of the Yankee army all the cotton should be burned” (South. Hist. Soc. Papers, VII, 156).
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A NEW ESTIMATE OF CROMWELL
A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the January meeting of 1898, and printed in the Atlantic Monthly of June, 1898.
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A NEW ESTIMATE OF CROMWELL
The most notable contributions to the historical literature of England during the year 1897 are two volumes by Samuel R. Gardiner: the Oxford lectures, “Cromwell’s Place in History,” published in the spring; and the second volume of “History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate,” which appeared in the autumn. These present what is probably a new view of Cromwell.
If one loves a country or an historic epoch, it is natural for the mind to seek a hero to represent it. We are fortunate in having Washington and Lincoln, whose characters and whose lives sum up well the periods in which they were our benefactors. But if we look upon our history as being the continuation of a branch of that of England, who is the political hero in the nation from which we sprang who represents a great principle or idea that we love to cherish? Hampden might answer if only we knew more about him. It occurs to me that Gray, in his poem which is read and conned from boyhood to old age, has done more than any one else to spread abroad the fame of Hampden. Included in the same stanza with Milton and with Cromwell, he seems to the mere reader of the poem to occupy the same place in history. In truth, however, as Mr. Gardiner writes, “it is remarkable how little can be discovered about Hampden. All that is known is to his credit, but his greatness appears from the impression he created upon others more than from the circumstances of his own life as they have been handed down to us.”
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The minds of American boys educated under Puritan influences before and during the war of secession accordingly turned to Cromwell. Had our Puritan ancestors remained at home till the civil war in England, they would have fought under the great Oliver, and it is natural that their descendants should venerate him. All young men of the period of which I am speaking, who were interested in history, read Macaulay, the first volume of whose history appeared in 1848, and they found in Cromwell a hero to their liking. Carlyle’s Cromwell was published three years before, and those who could digest stronger food found the great man therein portrayed a chosen one of God to lead his people in the right path. Everybody echoed the thought of Carlyle when he averred that ten years more of Oliver Cromwell’s life would have given another history to all the centuries of England.