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186s] The burning of Columbia. 529 sons of that sturdy race which in two generations had changed the West from a wilderness to civilisation. Many of its soldiers were veterans serving a second term of enlistment, expert axe-men and river-men, who in the campaigns of Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Atlanta, and the march to the sea, had acquired a degree of practical experience, organisation and confidence, that made light of privations and reduced difficulty to commonplace. Compared with the new task, the march to the sea had been a pleasant autumn excursion. Here were swamps to be waded through waist-deep, bridges to be improvised over numberless headwater channels, hundreds of miles of corduroy roads to be laid, railroad tracks to be torn up and destroyed, and a daily and co-ordinate progress of ten or twelve miles to be maintained throughout. Sherman's memoirs dwell with pardonable pride on this midwinter journey of 425 miles in fifty days, in which the army crossed five navigable rivers, occupied three important cities, and ruined the whole railroad system of South Carolina. Repeating the strategy of his earlier march, Sherman threatened Augusta to the left and Charleston to the right, and passing between them united his army at Columbia, South Carolina, on February 16. The Mayor formally surrendered the place; but the Confederates, before leaving it, had piled a large quantity of cotton into a narrow line in the street, and set it on fire. Loose flakes of cotton, blown by the strong wind, set fire to neighbouring houses. For a while the Federal troops and the citizens laboured hopefully to prevent a spread of the flames; but the wind rose to a gale which continued the greater part of the night ; and, spreading beyond control, the conflagration burned out the heart of the city. The charge that this was a deliberate act of vengeance has been distinctly disproved in a careful judicial investigation, by the mixed commission on American and British claims under the Treaty of Wash- ington, as also by the orders of Sherman, and by his leaving a generous supply of provisions to feed the unfortunate sufferers. When Hardee evacuated Savannah, he had retreated to Charleston ; and that city, whose defences had for four years withstood every bombard- ment, assault and engineering device of a powerful Federal fleet, had now in turn to be given up as a direct result of Sherman's occupation of Columbia. Here again the retreating Confederates burned the cotton warehouses ; and a considerable part of Charleston went up in flames as a consequence. Still threatening right and left, Sherman reached Cheraw on March 3, and Fayetteville on March 12. Here he was able to open communication with General Terry, who had advanced from Fort Fisher to Wilmington. Here also he was able to free his army from the encumbrance of about 30,000 negroes who followed his march, sending them to Federal camps on the coast. Up to this time there had been practically no fighting; but Sherman now learned that General Johnston was once more in command of the Confederate forces, and was c. M. H. vii. CH. xvi. 34