General William Tecumseh Sherman drew a wide variety of opinions during his time in the American Civil War. From the perspective of the northern United States, communities looked on with pride and approval as Sherman fought his way through Georgia and the Carolinas while Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee exchanged shots in the north. Nevertheless, Sherman’s army left great swaths of destruction in its wake as it marched through Confederate territory. Sherman’s brutality was fairly equal in the Georgia and Carolina campaigns, but for the purpose of this article we will focus on his march through South Carolina. There, Sherman’s forces pillaged and scavenged the places they came across in their travels, and the army left the state’s capital city of Columbia shelled by artillery and heavily burned. With this in mind, the disagreements about Sherman’s reputation largely arise over whether the destruction attributed to his troops was just the tragic consequence of modern warfare, or whether he and his troops went too far in ravaging the south to the degree that transpired.
One reason that Sherman’s South Carolina campaign comes under more critical scrutiny than other areas is because his army was relatively unopposed as it marched through the state. The main Confederate army defending against Sherman was the army of Tennessee. This army had been defending against Sherman in Georgia and by this point its manpower was dwindling. It also was suffering from fractures in leadership. Before Sherman invaded South Carolina, leadership of the army of Tennessee was transferred from General Joseph E. Johnston to General John B. Hood. As General Hood proved unable to stop Sherman, further fractions occurred, with General Hardee splitting from the army of Tennessee to command the Department of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. While the Army of Tennessee questioned its leadership, General Ulysses S. Grant was pushing General Robert E. Lee back into Virginia, causing manpower that could have helped defend South Carolina to be funneled north, instead of South.
By the time Sherman arrived in South Carolina, the Army of Tennessee and the Department of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida were suffering from manpower shortages. General Hood, who took command of the Army of Tennessee after Johnston, estimated the strength of the original Army of Tennessee as around 70,000 men, writing, “Never had so large a Confederate Army assembled in the West.”[i] Hood’s estimates are likely biased as General Johnston was his rival, and Johnston was put back in charge of the Army of Tennessee after General Hood failed to bring successes. Hood wrote of Johnston’s losses in defending against Sherman in Georgia, stating that on July 18th, 1864, when Johnston was relieved of command in favor of Hood, the army was “a total effective of forty-eight thousand seven hundred and fifty (48,750) men” consisting of infantry, artillery, cavalry and militia.[ii] Losses under Hood continued, and he stated that, “official reports of the Army on the 20th of September show an effective total of forty thousand four hundred and three (40,403) present.”[iii] Only eight days after that report, Hood received orders, “relieving Lieutenant General Hardee from duty with the Army of Tennessee, and assigning him to the command of the Department of South Carolina and Florida.”[iv] This is what faced Sherman in South Carolina. The Army of Tennessee was depleted to around 40,000 men from its original 70,000 and only a sub-section of the Army of Tennessee was in charge of defending South Carolina.
By February 22nd, 1865, Johnston was put back in charge of the Army of Tennessee and absorbed the Department of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Johnston was directed by Lee to “concentrate all available forces and drive back Sherman.”[v] General Johnston had his own statistics to use against his rival, Hood, and they also showed the state of the defenses of South Carolina. Johnston recorded that “the ‘available forces’ were about five thousand men of the Army of Tennessee, and the troops of the department, amounting to about eleven thousand…Eleven hundred of them were South Carolina militia and reserves, not expected to leave the State.”[vi] The army that General Hood suspected to be around 70,000 men strong was depleted to only 10,000 full-time soldiers by the end of February, 1865. Johnston wrote that against Sherman’s 70,000 strong army, “the Confederate forces were utterly inadequate to the exploit of driving it back.”[vii] Johnston replied to General Lee’s letter on February 23rd, expressing his view that there was no hope of taking back South Carolina. He wrote, “It is too late to expect me to concentrate troops capable of driving back Sherman. The remnant of the Army of Tennessee is much divided. So are other troops,” and the disarray of the Army of Tennessee is emphasized with his final words, “I have no staff.”[viii] With this depleted and fairly unorganized group defending South Carolina, Sherman had free reign over the state. Sherman, himself, described the South Carolinian defenses as, “scattered and inconsiderable forces.”[ix]
The knowledge that the Confederate army could not save them must have added to the fear that South Carolinians felt when they thought of Sherman. The newspapers of South Carolina began relaying the message that no help was coming from the north. A reporter for The Charleston Mercury, under the name Hermes, wrote a letter on February 3rd that was published February 9th, stating, “Sherman advancing certainly on Branchville, and no General of the first rank to oppose him, and, we fear, no adequate force in the hands of a General of the second rank.”[x] South Carolinians realized that the defenses of the state were very poor, and they would need outside help. Hermes continued, writing, “we hear it said that Lee must abandon Richmond if Sherman gets Branchville, yet we see no signs of the evacuation of Richmond, nor any adequate dispositions to thwart Sherman.”[xi] The few forces that were defending South Carolina did not know where to set up defenses. Between Charleston and Columbia, most of the defenses were placed near Charleston, leaving Columbia weak. General W. T. Sherman mused over this in his description of his decision to attack Columbia: “they abandoned poor Columbia to the care of Hampton’s cavalry, which was confused by the rumors that poured in on it, so that both Beauregard and Wade Hampton, who were in Columbia seem to have lost their heads.”[xii] Sherman must have appeared much more threatening to South Carolinians than to others, such as Georgians, because South Carolina could put up very little resistance against him as he marched ever closer.
Sherman’s Reputation Preceded him.
Sherman did truly leave destruction in his wake, but the fear of being defenseless may have made South Carolinians see the destruction as more devilish than it really was. Sherman would treat the city of Columbia almost exactly as he did the city of Atlanta, Georgia. The knowledge of Sherman’s destructive past, and knowing that they could not defend against it, had a palpable psychological effect on the South Carolinians when they realized that Sherman was coming after them next. General Hood, who defended Atlanta, had written to Sherman, accusing him of firing artillery at civilians without warning, stating, “there are a hundred thousand witnesses that you fired into the habitations of women and children for weeks, firing far above and miles beyond my lines of defense.”[xiii] General Sherman sent a letter in reply to Hood, stating, “I was not bound by the laws of war to give notice of the shelling of Atlanta, a ‘fortified town, with magazines, arsenals, foundries, and public stores:’ you were bound to take notice.”[xiv] General Sherman left Atlanta in a mess. General Hood described the defeated city of Atlanta using Sherman’s own words, “Sherman admits, in his Memoirs, that he burned stores and dwellings; that ‘the heart of the city was in flames all night;’ that he telegraphed to Grant that he had ‘made a wreck of Atlanta,‘ which he afterword termed ‘the ruined city.’”[xv] Columbia would soon face the same fate, and its remains would also be described in much the same wording.
South Carolinians received word through their newspapers of Sherman’s actions in Georgia. A correspondent of The Charleston Mercury wrote from Savannah that, “The cotton seems to be in some danger of being destroyed by fire before it leaves here. There have been two or three fires on as many nights past among the cotton stored in large warehouses on the river, evidently the work of incendiaries.”[xvi] The reporter from Savannah also sent to Charleston the response that Sherman gave to Confederate guerillas still operating in Georgia: “Should a Union man be murdered, then a rebel selected by lot will be shot, or if a union family be persecuted on account of the cause, a rebel family will be banished to foreign land. In aggravated cases retaliation will extend to as high as five for one.”[xvii] Naturally, many South Carolinians would have heard these stories of the fires in Georgia and Sherman’s reprisals against southern sympathizers by the time Sherman’s men had marched onto South Carolinian soil.
Targeting Resources and Infrastructure
There is no doubt that Sherman targeted private property and infrastructure in South Carolina. In his memoirs, Sherman recalled destroying railroads and raiding plantations. On raiding the countryside, Sherman wrote, “The question of supplies remained still the one of vital importance” but Sherman felt he could “safely rely on the country for a considerable quantity of forage and provisions.”[xviii] Many of the foragers and scavengers may have decided to become pillagers, but Sherman does not mention this. He did, however, applaud a “parcel of our foragers, in search of plunder” that went on to single-handedly seize the main hub of the South Carolina Railroad.[xix] Sherman described the process of destroying the railroad: “details of men were set to work to tear up the rails, to burn the ties and twist the bars.”[xx] Similarly, southern estates and plantations were in grave danger if Sherman came upon them, as he considered them enemy property. Sherman explained in his memoirs, “no doubt a good deal of cotton was burned, for we all regarded cotton as hostile property, a thing to be destroyed.”[xxi] The destruction caused by Sherman’s army was made worse by the slash and burn tactics implemented by the South Carolina Confederates on the very land they hoped to defend. Sherman observed, “on the appearance of a mere squad of our men they burned their own bridges.”[xxii] The combined devastation of Sherman’s foraging and destruction of plantations was complemented to horrible effect by the Confederate tactics of making their own supplies and infrastructure unusable as Sherman pushed toward Columbia.
Occupying the State Capitol
Just like in Atlanta, Sherman began by lobbing artillery into the vicinity of Columbia. In his memoirs, Sherman wrote that he did not want to harm civilians, and defended himself by saying “I have yet to hear of any single person having been killed in Columbia by our cannon.”[xxiii] However, he did not deny that he shot artillery into the city. Sherman stated that he gave consent for his artillery to begin “bursting a few shells near the depot, to scare away the negroes who were appropriating the bags of corn and meal which we wanted, also to fire three shots at the unoccupied State-House.”[xxiv] Sherman wrote that the Confederacy tried to burn the supplies still stored in Columbia before Union forces took the city. He recorded that bales of cotton in Columbia “had been fired by the rebel cavalry on withdrawing from the city that morning,” but Sherman’s own men could have been responsible, as he said earlier, his men thought cotton was ‘hostile property.’[xxv] Sherman also observed that the depot he had allowed to be shot with ‘a few shells’ was “burned to the ground” with “piles of cotton bags filled with corn and corn-meal, partially burned.”[xxvi] Sherman’s view that Confederates burned their own supplies was voiced in a contemporaneous Philadelphia-based newspaper, The Christian Recorder, which wrote, “Through private sources we learn that two days ago, when it was decided not to attempt the defense of Columbia a large number of medical stores, which it was thought impossible to remove were destroyed.”[xxvii] It is likely some Confederate supplies were burned before the defending forces fled Columbia, but it is also possible that Sherman’s men may have decided to burn the cotton, and that even the ‘few’ shells that struck the depot could have sparked a fire.
Columbia Burns
One of the most infamous events of Sherman’s campaign in the south was the fire that burned down much of Columbia on the night of February 17th, 1865, while Sherman occupied the city. The ruination of Columbia was especially disastrous because of the earlier fall of Charleston. The Boston newspaper, The Liberator, commented on this, stating, “The noted rebels of Charleston have left the city, having previously sent their valuables, silver and furniture, to Columbia for safe keeping: but it was undoubtedly all destroyed and taken away when that town fell into the hands of Sherman’s brave boys.”[xxviii] Therefore, many South Carolinians who relocated from Charleston to the capitol of Columbia likely later found their remaining possessions burned away with the city.
Sherman laid out a defense for himself in his memoirs regarding the fire that broke out in Columbia. He blamed it on “the cotton which General Wade Hampton’s men had set fire to on leaving the city” and he argued that Union troops were attempting to put out the fire, but “the high wind was spreading the flames beyond all control.”[xxix] Sherman described Columbia after the fire as, “a ruined city. About half of it was in ashes and in smoldering heaps. Many of the people were houseless.”[xxx] After the fire, Sherman, “destroyed several valuable foundries and the factory of Confederate money,” which must have been aggravating to South Carolinians who had just witnessed half of their capital city burn to the ground.[xxxi] Sherman closed off his defense of the fire of Columbia by bringing to the attention of the reader that the Treaty of Washington investigation into the fire “failed to award a verdict” and that the damages “did not result from the acts of the General Government of the United States –that is to say, from my army.”[xxxii] Whether that statement is true, or if it is a case of the victor writing history, is still debatable. Interesting evidence against Sherman comes from a letter sent by a former slave writing out of Columbia to the Pennsylvania-based newspaper, The Christian Recorder, after the fire in Columbia. Even though the writer, John Horton, is a Union supporter, he writes, “I take the present opportunity to drop a few lines to inform you that when Sherman’s Army passed through here, they burnt our Church, and we are now trying to raise funds to build another.”[xxxiii] Whatever the origin of the fire, Sherman interestingly prefaced his description of his march away from the South Carolina capital city with the curious phrasing of, “Having utterly ruined Columbia.”[xxxiv] Whether or not Sherman personally called for the burning of Columbia, or if he just could not contain the blaze, Sherman was responsible for the city he had conquered, and it became ‘utterly ruined’ under his watch.
Chaos in the Confederacy
Besides pillaging and fires, Sherman was involved in less physical and destructive means of riling up the Confederates. The newspaper, The Liberator, published that Sherman planned to banish Confederates from coastland and islands that would be given to former slaves. The Liberator claimed, “The islands from Charleston south, the abandoned rice-fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. John River, Florida, are reserved and set apart for the settlement of the negroes now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of the President of the United States.”[xxxv] The Liberator also stated that the Union took over public education in Charleston, as the military appointed James Redpath and a Mr. O’Donnel who were “invested with power to take possession of school buildings and school property; also to confiscate all Confederate books.”[xxxvi] South Carolinians were already bitter about plantations being looted and burned, crops being scavenged, and the city of Columbia catching fire and burning to the ground. They must have despised Sherman even more for meddling in their schools, and especially for taking away some of their land to give to their former slaves.
Sherman, undoubtedly left South Carolina burned and damaged, but his actions likely are not as atrocious as southern legend holds them to be. It is a common part of warfare, especially modern warfare, to target enemy infrastructure and economically important structures. Sherman’s targeting of railroads, factories, and cotton makes military sense. Sherman had to scavenge for supplies, but that was also a common practice in the Civil War. Sherman shelled the cities of Atlanta and Columbia, but that is a tragic part of modern warfare that has only escalated in intensity after the Civil War, as factories and cities are now common targets for bombing. There is no way to know if Sherman, or Sherman’s men, or the Confederacy, caused the fire in Columbia, but it was still Sherman’s responsibility to protect the city after he occupied it. Sherman may not have caused the wide destruction in Atlanta and Columbia, but Sherman did a poor job containing the chaos that followed his march through the south. Even if Sherman did not participate in the chaos, he likely had no quarrel in causing damage to Confederates in South Carolina, for which he stated, “I had a species of contempt.”[xxxvii]
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Top Picture attribution: (Columbia from the Capitol (left) and Sherman at Atlanta (right), both photographed by George Norman Barnard (c. 1819-1902), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons, the MET and the Smithsonian).
Bibliography
- “From Savannah.” The Charleston Mercury. February 4th, 1865.
- “From the Seat of War in South Carolina.” The Charleston Mercury. February 10th, 1865.
- “Gen. Sherman on the Negroes. The South Carolina Sea Islands Set Apart for the Settlement of the Contrabands.” The Liberator. February 10th, 1865.
- Hermes. “Letter From Richmond. (Correspondence of the Mercury).” The Charleston Mercury. February 9th, 1865.
- Carr, Matt. “General Sherman’s March to the Sea,” History Today 64:11 (2014).
- Hood, General John B. Advance and Retreat: Personal Experiences in the United States & Confederate State Armies. Da Capo Press. 1993.
- Horton, John. “Letter From Columbia.” The Christian Recorder. September 30th, 1865.
- Newcomb, George. “From Charleston.” The Liberator. March 31st, 1865.
- Johnston, General Joseph E. Narrative of Military Operations Directed, During the Late War Between the States (Civil War Centennial Series). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1959.
- Sherman, William T. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman. Renaissance Classics. 2012.
- “Triumph of Sherman—Official Gazette—Washington, Feb.” The Christian Recorder. February 25th, 1865.
Endnotes
[i] General John B. Hood. Advance and Retreat: Personal Experiences in the United States & Confederate State Armies. Da Capo Press. 1993. Pg. 318.
[ii] General John B. Hood. Advance and Retreat: Personal Experiences in the United States & Confederate State Armies. Da Capo Press. 1993. Pg. 320.
[iii] General John B. Hood. Advance and Retreat: Personal Experiences in the United States & Confederate State Armies. Da Capo Press. 1993. Pg. 336.
[iv] General John B. Hood. Advance and Retreat: Personal Experiences in the United States & Confederate State Armies. Da Capo Press. 1993. Pg. 255.
[v] General Joseph E. Johnston. Narrative of Military Operations Directed, During the Late War Between the States (Civil War Centennial Series). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1959. Pg. 371.
[vi] General Joseph E. Johnston. Narrative of Military Operations Directed, During the Late War Between the States (Civil War Centennial Series). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1959. Pg. 372.
[vii] General Joseph E. Johnston. Narrative of Military Operations Directed, During the Late War Between the States (Civil War Centennial Series). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1959. Pg. 373.
[viii] General Joseph E. Johnston. Narrative of Military Operations Directed, During the Late War Between the States (Civil War Centennial Series). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1959. Pg. 587.
[ix] W.T. Sherman. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman. Renaissance Classics. 2012. Pg. 338.
[x] Hermes. “Letter From Richmond. (Correspondence of the Mercury).” The Charleston Mercury. February 9th, 1865.
[xi] Hermes. “Letter From Richmond. (Correspondence of the Mercury).” The Charleston Mercury. February 9th, 1865.
[xii] W.T. Sherman. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman. Renaissance Classics. 2012. Pg. 340.
[xiii] General John B. Hood. Advance and Retreat: Personal Experiences in the United States & Confederate State Armies. Da Capo Press. 1993. Pg. 233.
[xiv] General John B. Hood. Advance and Retreat: Personal Experiences in the United States & Confederate State Armies. Da Capo Press. 1993. Pg. 236.
[xv] General John B. Hood. Advance and Retreat: Personal Experiences in the United States & Confederate State Armies. Da Capo Press. 1993. Pg. 241.
[xvi] “From Savannah.” The Charleston Mercury. February 4th, 1865.
[xvii] “From Savannah.” The Charleston Mercury. February 4th, 1865.
[xviii] W.T. Sherman. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman. Renaissance Classics. 2012. Pg. 338.
[xix] W.T. Sherman. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman. Renaissance Classics. 2012. Pg. 339.
[xx] W.T. Sherman. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman. Renaissance Classics. 2012. Pg. 339.
[xxi] W.T. Sherman. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman. Renaissance Classics. 2012. Pg. 340.
[xxii] W.T. Sherman. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman. Renaissance Classics. 2012. Pg. 39.
[xxiii] W.T. Sherman. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman. Renaissance Classics. 2012. Pg. 341.
[xxiv] W.T. Sherman. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman. Renaissance Classics. 2012. Pg. 341.
[xxv] W.T. Sherman. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman. Renaissance Classics. 2012. Pg. 342.
[xxvi] W.T. Sherman. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman. Renaissance Classics. 2012. Pg. 342.
[xxvii] “Triumph of Sherman—Official Gazette—Washington, Feb.” The Christian Recorder. February 25th, 1865.
[xxviii] George Newcomb. “From Charleston.” The Liberator. March 31st, 1865.
[xxix] W.T. Sherman. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman. Renaissance Classics. 2012. Pg. 345.
[xxx] W.T. Sherman. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman. Renaissance Classics. 2012. Pg. 345.
[xxxi] W.T. Sherman. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman. Renaissance Classics. 2012. Pg. 346.
[xxxii] W.T. Sherman. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman. Renaissance Classics. 2012. Pg. 345.
[xxxiii] John Horton. “Letter From Columbia.” The Christian Recorder. September 30th, 1865.
[xxxiv] W.T. Sherman. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman. Renaissance Classics. 2012. Pg. 346.
[xxxv] “Gen. Sherman on the Negroes. The South Carolina Sea Islands Set Apart for the Settlement of the Contrabands.” The Liberator. February 10th, 1865.
[xxxvi] George Newcomb. “From Charleston.” The Liberator. March 31st, 1865.
[xxxvii] W.T. Sherman. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman. Renaissance Classics. 2012. Pg. 338.
