Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 13.djvu/453

 452 Southern Historical Society Papers.

just as this feeling was toward the country people in South Carolina, it was universal. I first saw its fruits at Purisburg, where two or three piles of blackened bricks and an acre or so of dying embers marked the site of an old revolutionary town ; and this before the column had fairly got its hand in" Again: "The ruined home- steads of the Palmetto State will long be remembered. The army might safely march the darkest night, the crackling pine woods shoot- ing up their columns of flame, and the burning houses along the way -would light it on. * * * As for the 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, 4 just to bring an old hard-fisted cuss to his senses,' and you have a pretty good idea of the whole thing. Besides compelling the enemy to evacuate Charleston, WE destroyed Columbia, Orangeburg, and several other places, also over fifty miles of railroad, and thousands of bales of cotton." Major Nichols, of General Sherman's staff, in his History, under date of January 30, 1865, says: " The actual inva- sion of South Carolina has begun. The well-known sight of columns of black smoke meets our gaze again. This time, houses are burning, and South Carolina has commenced to pay an instalment, long over- due, on her debt to justice and humanity. With the help of God, we will have principal and interest before we leave her borders. " This is Federal testimony. And why should not officers and men have acted in the way described? General Sherman was in supreme command. Had they aught to fear from him ? They came into South Carolina with the determination to make an example of the Palmetto State. Is it credible that they drew the line at Columbia and spared the Capital, when nothing else was left unscathed ? Gen- eral Sherman himself shall answer.

In the Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, By Himself, (page 226) we find a dispatch of General Sherman to General W. H- Halleck, dated Headquarters in the Field, Savannah, December 24, 1864. It is given in full. General Sherman says :

" This war differs from European wars in this particular : We are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies. I know that this recent movement of mine through Georgia has had a wonderful effect in this respect. Thou- sands who had been deceived by their lying newspapers to believe that we were being whipped all the time now realize the truth, and have no appetite for a repetition of the same experience. To be sure Jeff. Davis has his people under pretty good discipline, but I