Seventh. Mr. Whitelaw Reid's "Ohio in the War" says of this destruction of Columbia: "It was the most monstrous barbarity of the barbarous march." This opinion bears upon the character of the act, not upon the question of who did it.
Eighth. Before the Mixed Claims Commission scores of witnesses testified to the fact that the soldiers of Sherman's army set fire to the city in hundreds of places; that they carried about torches, kerosene or petroleum balls, and buckets of the inflammable fluid, lighting fires wherever the wind would not carry the flames fast enough; that this was done often in the presence of their officers, who made no attempt to check or to punish them; and that—as above shown in Sherman's letter to Halleck—General Sherman selected his guards from a corps notorious for their violent and destroying habits, and that, with opportunities furnished by the commanding General himself, these men plundered, burned and robbed in the presence of their officers, and all this with the previous, present and perfect knowledge of General Sherman himself.
Ninth. Mr. William Beverly Nash, a negro, then resident in Columbia, now a State Senator of South Carolina, who was a delegate to the Philadelphia Republican Convention that nominated President Grant in 1872, has made affidavit to the effect that the Federal troops burned Columbia and that General Hampton had nothing to do with it. This is an eye witness of a race and of a party not likely to stretch a point in General Hampton's favor.
Tenth. Dr. T. J. Goodwyn, the Mayor of Columbia, who surrendered the city to Colonel Stone, in his affidavit testifies that with a number of leading citizens he called upon General Sherman two days after the fire; that in the course of conversation about the burning of the city, General Sherman said that he thought his troops burned the city, but excused them because, as he alleged, the citizens had given them liquor. Generals Howard and Blair and other Federal officers were present at this conversation. It is manifest that General Sherman afterwards forgot about this liquor matter when he talked before the Claims Commission, seven years later, about the discipline of his soldiers and the long-roll's power to bring every man to his ranks at any moment.
Eleventh. Colonel Stone, who received the city in surrender, two hours before General Sherman entered it, in a letter to the Chicago Tribune, says: "The streets in some instances contained bales of cotton which had been cut open, and these caught fire twice or three times during the day; but these fires had been promptly put
