War Crimes Against Southern Civilians

by Walter Cisco

  The Confederates also sought some measure of justice for the pillaging. At least two parties of Federal foragers were found dead near the towns of Chester and Feasterville. "Death to all foragers" was the sign posted on the bodies. Sherman assumed they had been killed after capture and sent a letter to Lt. Gen. Wade Hampton, Confederate cavalry commander, threatening to kill Southern prisoners in retaliation. Hampton promised to execute two Federals for every Confederate if Sherman carried out his threat. The South Carolinian-who had lost his own home and those of his family to Federal arsonists-had something to say to the man who was destroying his state and despoiling its people.

  I do not believe my men killed any of yours, except under circumstances in which it was perfectly legitimate and proper that they should kill them. It is a part of the system of the thieves whom you designate as your foragers to fire the dwellings of those citizens whom they have robbed. To check this inhuman system, which is justly execrated by every civilized nation, I have directed my men to shoot down all of your men who are caught burning houses. This order shall remain in force so long as you disgrace the profession of arms by allowing your men to destroy private dwellings....

  I do not, sir, question this right [to forage on the country]. But there is a right older, even, than this, and one more inalienable-the right that every man has to defend his home and to protect those who are dependent on him; and from my heart I wish that every old man and boy in my country who can fire a gun would shoot down, as he would a wild beast, the men who are desolating their land, burning their homes, and insulting their women....

  You have permitted, if you have not ordered, the commission of these offenses against humanity and the rules of war; you fired into the city of Columbia without a word of warning; after its surrender by the mayor, who demanded protection to private property, you laid the whole city in ashes, leaving amidst its ruins thousands of old men and helpless women and children, who are likely to perish of starvation and exposure. Your line of march can be traced by the lurid light of burning houses.",

  Sherman's men had indeed carried out their general's wishes to lay waste to South Carolina. "Even before we came into the State the privations were vastly greater than we had ever supposed," wrote a Federal officer. Now he predicted that the devastated territory "will be abandoned by the inhabitants who will never return."41 Indeed, some towns disappeared from the map.

  "I never saw so much destruction of property before," recorded a Union company commander in South Carolina. "Very few houses escape burning, as almost everybody has run away from before us, you may imagine there is not much left in our track."" A Union colonel agreed with that assessment:

  We have given South Carolina a terrible scourging.... Our army has occupied in moving a belt of from thirty to seventy miles. We have destroyed all factories, cotton mills, gins, presses and cotton; burnt one city, the capital, and most of the villages on our route as well as most of the barns, outbuildings and dwelling houses, and every house that escaped fire has been pillaged."'

  Plundering in South Carolina

  Another soldier concurred that there was "no restraint whatever in pillaging and foraging" while in South Carolina. "Men were allowed to do as they liked, burn and destroy." But the state "was deserving of it certainly," he was quick to add, as her people were "Enemies of Liberty and free government."" An Indiana chaplain agreed that the people of that state were responsible for the atrocities visited upon them. He recounted that the suffering of the people was the "full reward of their folly and crimes," observing that "sometimes the world seemed on fire" as a result of the Union's version of justice.

  A Yankee newsman who had seen the March to the Sea summarized Sherman's campaign in South Carolina: "As for wholesale burnings, pillage, devastation, committed in South Carolina, magnify all I have said of Georgia some fifty fold, and then throw in an occasional murder, `just to make an old, hardfisted cuss come to his senses,' and you have a pretty good idea of the whole thing."''

  Chapter 22

  "And What Do You Think of

  the Yankees Now?"

  The Burning of Columbia

  A refugee fleeing Savannah was advised by one Federal officer to avoid the cities and towns of South Carolina-particularly Columbia-since "it was the cradle of secession and must be punished." Another soldier of Sherman's command relished the prospect that "fire & sword" were about to descend, "and there is not one in all the length & breadth of the land to stop our hands."' By mid-February 1865 that army arrived on the outskirts of the capital, a city by then made up almost entirely of women, children, old men, and slaves.'

  To slow the enemy's advance, bridges over the Congaree, Broad, and Saluda Rivers had been burned by retreating Confederates. Early on February 16, Union artillery unlimbered on the bank of the Congaree and began firing on downtown. Sherman seemed unconcerned about any Southern soldiers who might still be in the city but noted "quite a number of Negroes . . . near the burned depot." The general ordered his battery commander to aim at these civilians, as they "were appropriating the bags of corn and meal which we wanted."' In all, Federal artillery threw 325 rounds of shot and shell into the city that morning. "You could see the cannons every time they would fire," remembered a youthful observer, "and hear the shells whistle through the air. Some of them would explode in the air and others would not. Miraculously, only two civilians were killed by the bombardment.'

  Just before leaving the city, Confederate major general Wade Hampton was asked if bales of cotton piled in the streets should be destroyed by fire to avoid confiscation by the enemy. "No," he replied, "the wind is high; it might catch something and give Sherman an excuse to burn this town."6

  After Confederate forces evacuated, about 9 A.M., Mayor Thomas Jefferson Goodwyn met the advancing Federals and surrendered his city, asking for-and receiving-promise of protection for persons and property. Upon entering Columbia some Union officers permitted their men to be given liquor, and soldiers started looting stores and igniting the cotton. Flames were soon extinguished by municipal firefighters. One Iowa soldier said that when he arrived, "The cotton had been drenched and the street flooded with water and, to all appearances, the fire entirely subdued." That was fortunate, for about 2 P.M. troops began to pass the time by slashing and bayoneting hoses.'

  Throughout the day, reported a witness, "robbery was going on at every corner-in nearly every house." Purses, watches, hats, boots, overcoats-any item of value-were taken from victims, white or black. "Nor were these acts [entirely] those of common soldiers," he noted. "Commissioned officers, of a rank so high as that of a colonel, were frequently among the most active."" At one home soldiers in their search for hidden valuables stabbed knives into a mattress between terrified children, "thinking that the children were put there as a blind.""' Countless women had earrings ripped from bleeding ears. "I have myself seen a lady with the lobes of both ears torn asunder," wrote a foreign diplomat." A bedridden, dying woman had rings removed from her fingers. "In several cases, newly made graves were opened," remembered a witness, "the coffins taken out, broken open, in search of buried treasure, and the corpses left exposed."

  Yankee troops relieved themselves in the rooms of Columbia homes, defiling crockery, even urinating on beds.'' On one street a Union soldier, "seeing some children playing with a beautiful little greyhound, amused himself by beating its brains out."" Churches were pillaged. At the Catholic convent "soldiers drank the sacramental wine and profaned with fiery draughts of vulgar whiskey the goblets of the communion service. Some went off reeling under the weight of priestly robes, holy vessels and candlesticks.""

  "Columbia is a doomed city!" hissed one.15 "And what do you think of the Yankees now?" taunted another. "We mean to wipe you out! We'll burn the very stones of South Carolina." One victim observed, "To inspire terror in the weak ... seemed to these creatures a sort of heroism.""'

  That afternoon smoke was seen rising from suburban residences belonging to prominent "rebels," propert
ies specifically targeted by Federals. "It was surprising to see the readiness with which these incendiaries succeeded in their work of destruction," wrote local educator Sophie Sosnowski. "They had hardly passed out of sight when columns of smoke and flames rose to bring the sad news that another home had been sacrificed to the demon of malice and

  Then came sundown. "Four rockets have gone up," a lady told her family, "one at each corner of the town, all at the same moment." These rockets were recognized as a signal for general destruction." One observer said that at the signal "troops from the various camps began to pour into the city like locusts.""' Another remembered "the hitherto deserted street filled with a throng of men, drunken, dancing, shouting, cursing wretches, every one bearing a tin torch or a blazing lightwood knot.One saw soldiers as they "went about with matches, turpentine and cotton, with which they fired the houses."" Sixteen-year-old Emma LeConte described how "Sumter Street was brightly lighted by a burning house so near our piazza that we could feel the heat. By the red glare we could watch the wretches walking-generally staggering-back and forth from the camp to the town-shouting-hurrahing-cursing South Carolinaswearing-blaspheming-singing ribald According to a refugee from Charleston, "demons in human shape were leaping fences with torches and steeped cotton.... They danced with fearful shrieks and curses, and their forms shone out hideously in numbers on all sides in the light of our flaming homes."23 As victims reached the streets, wrote a woman in her diary, "we were greeted by, `How do you like secesh now,' `Columbia is skedaddling,' `Columbia is on a picnic,' and curses too fearful to be entered in my book.""

  "What we experienced that night is indescribable," said another. "At one time the air was so hot I felt I would suffocate. We walked under an arch of fire, meeting terrified children and distracted mothers."

  "I trust I shall never witness such a scene again-drunken soldiers, rushing from house to house, emptying them of their valuables, and then firing them," wrote Northern reporter David Conyngham. Of those troops ostensibly assigned to keep order, "I did not once see them interfering." "The frequent shots on every side told that some victim had fallen," he continued, recounting that he had himself been fired at for attempting to save a man from murder.

  "On came the flames," wrote a witness,

  driven by a fierce wind and augmented by the cruel torches of the fiends, who unrelentingly applied them to building after building, as they rushed from block to block. The streets were as bright as day, and the air was rent with the screams and cries of distress, mingled with infant wails, and the demon yells of the tormenters. Who can picture that scene, except to compare it with the lower regions?"

  Columbia on fire

  Seventy-two-year-old Agnes Law placed her trust in four "well-behaved and sober" soldiers standing guard over her home.

  When the city began to burn I wished to remove my furniture [she said], they objected and said my house was in no danger. Not long afterward these guards themselves took lighted candles from the mantelpiece and went up stairs.... My sister followed them up-stairs, but came down very soon to say, "They are setting the curtains on fire." Soon the whole house was in a blaze. When those who set fire up-stairs came down they said to me, "Old woman, if you do not mean to burn up with your house you had better get out of it."

  "I have been for over fifty years a member of the Presbyterian church," concluded Mrs. Law. "I cannot long live. I shall meet General Sherman and his soldiers at the bar of God, and I give this testimony against them in the full view of that dread

  Rev. Peter J. Shand, assisted by a servant, tried to save the silver communion service of Trinity Episcopal Church. They were stopped by soldiers who stole it along with that clergyman's watch.

  On Washington Street, the Methodist pastor twice smothered fires set at his church. Soon he saw that the parsonage was burning. Quickly he wrapped his child in a blanket and they escaped to the street only to witness flames breaking out anew at the church. Angered that he had tried to frustrate their arson, one Federal ripped the blanket away and threw it into the conflagration. "Damn you!" he snapped, "if you say a word, I'll throw the child after it."""

  Witnesses saw soldiers torching the Catholic convent. "What do you think of God now?" they shouted to the nuns. "Is not Sherman greater? Do you think now you are sanctified? We are as sanctified as you."'"

  Sunrise revealed a landscape of smoldering ruins. Much of the city, including the main business district, was gone. Thousands of homeless civilians huddled against the cold in gardens, parks, and cemeteries.' "Oh, it was a pitiable sight," wrote a Federal private, "to see the mothers with helpless children, out of doors, their houses burnt to the ground." But he was not surprised at the fate of "secessionist" Columbia. "Our soldiers always said if they entered the place, they would burn it and they did.""'

  "It is true our men have burnt Columbia," Sherman told Mayor Goodwyn the morning after, "but it was your fault." Columbia's civilian population, he insisted, had made his men drunk." "I know that the general judgment of the country is that no matter how it began," Sherman privately confided to his brother, "it was all right.""" In his official report he pointed the finger at Wade Hampton, claiming the Confederate general left burning cotton in the streets. Later Sherman confessed that he charged Hampton only "to shake the faith of his people in him," inadvertently admitting at the same time that it was indeed his own troops who "utterly ruined

  "Sherman may have issued no order," concluded one historian of the city's destruction, "but his failure to control his men constituted probable tacit consent.""' "There is no doubt whatsoever," wrote another, "that Union soldiers were to blame for what happened, some with intent, others by default in their drunken stupor.""' Incredibly, there are still those who downplay Federal responsibility." "If a transaction that occurred in the presence of forty or fifty thousand people can be successfully falsified," concluded witness Edwin J. Scott, "then all human testimony is worthless."'

  Chapter 23

  "We Must Make the

  Thing Pay Somehow"

  Sherman in North Carolina

  Like most Northerners, William T. Sherman profoundly misunderstood Southern "Unionism." Upon entering North Carolina he issued an order to Brig. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick that the cavalry chief "deal as moderately, and fairly by North Carolinians as possible, and fan the flame of discord already subsisting between them and their proud cousins of South Carolina. There never was much love between them."' Indeed, for decades North Carolinians had distrusted Palmetto State disunionism and initially viewed secession as unnecessary and unwise. But everything changed on April 15, 1861, when Lincoln called for troops to invade the new Confederacy. Unionism in North Carolina was not unconditional; her people would not countenance coercion. "I can be no party to this wicked violation of the laws of the country and to this war upon the liberties of a free people," replied North Carolina's governor, John Ellis. "You can get no troops from North Carolina." Delegates, most former Unionists, met in convention and voted unanimously for secession.' During the course of the war at least 120,000 North Carolinians donned the Confederate uniform to fight for independence, and a third gave their lives in that cause.'

  Sherman's admonition to deal "moderately" was generally ignored, and he must have quickly realized that these people were not about to embrace his Union. "Poor North Carolina will have a hard time," the general wrote privately after a month in that state, "for we sweep the country like a swarm of locusts. Thousands of people may perish, but they now realise that war means something else than vain glory and boasting."4

  Monroe and Wadesboro were among the first to "have a hard time" at the hands of Kilpatrick's troopers. Episcopal bishop of North Carolina, Thomas Atkinson, was threatened with death if he did not give up his watch, horse, and possessions. Another Anson County man was robbed of his watch and money, and the next band of Federals to arrive at his home demanded the very same items. They killed him when he could not produce them.' At a nearby home Yankees chopped furniture
to pieces with an axe and scattered feathers from pillows on a bedroom floor then poured on buckets of molasses and stirred thoroughly. Ten wagons filled with unlucky refugees were overtaken and their possessions captured."

  Anson County resident Esther Alden grieved about the suffering of her neighbors as well as over what the Yankees did to the animals.

  It is like some horrid nightmare. When I shut my eyes I see nothing but creatures and human beings in agony. The poor suffering horses! Some fortunately dead and out of their misery, others groaning in death pains, some with disabled limbs freely hobbling about to glean a blade of grass; the cows and oxen slaughtered and left to rot! I counted eight beautiful calves lying dead in one pen; many times we saw two or three lying dead side by side!'

  Teenager Janie Smith was appalled by the Federals' obsession with sparing no living thing, however insignificant. She called them "fiends incarnate." At her home an old hen "played sick and thus saved her neck, but lost all her children," said Janie. Chicks were chased by the soldiers, who "would run all over the yard to catch the little things to squeeze to death.""

  In Fayetteville the Yankees destroyed one thousand horses and mules they had no use for. There were two killing grounds: one a field on the bank of the Cape Fear River, the other a corral in town. It took hours to shoot them all. Trying to run, some of the terrified animals plunged into the river. Most were left where they fell, with no effort made by Federals to dispose of the carcasses as the troops abandoned the town. "They were burned," wrote a witness, "and you may try to imagine the odor, if you can.""