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N0KFQ > TODAY 17.02.16 16:24l 52 Lines 2222 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 84927_N0KFQ
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Feb 17
Path: IW8PGT<CX2SA<GB7CIP<N0KFQ
Sent: 160217/1520Z 84927@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.4.65
1865
Sherman sacks Columbia, South Carolina
On this day in 1865, the soldiers from Union General William
Tecumseh Sherman's army ransack Columbia, South Carolina, and
leave a charred city in their wake.
Sherman is most famous for his March to the Sea in the closing
months of 1864. After capturing Atlanta in September, Sherman cut
away from his supply lines and cut a swath of destruction across
Georgia on his way to Savannah. His army lived off the land and
destroyed railroads, burned warehouses, and ruined plantations
along the way. This was a calculated effort-Sherman thought that
the war would end more quickly if civilians of the South felt
some destruction personally, a view supported by General Ulysses
S. Grant, commander of all Union forces, and President Abraham
Lincoln.
After spending a month in Savannah, Sherman headed north to tear
the Confederacy into smaller pieces. The Yankee soldiers took
particular delight in carrying the war to South Carolina, the
symbol of the rebellion. It was the first state to secede and the
site of Fort Sumter, where South Carolinians fired on the Federal
garrison to start the war in April 1861. When Confederate General
Wade Hampton's cavalry evacuated Columbia, the capital was open
to Sherman's men.
Many of the Yankees got drunk before starting the rampage. Union
General Henry Slocum observed: "A drunken soldier with a musket
in one hand and a match in the other is not a pleasant visitor to
have about the house on a dark, windy night." Sherman claimed
that the raging fires were started by evacuating Confederates and
fanned by high winds. He later wrote: "Though I never ordered it
and never wished it, I have never shed any tears over the event,
because I believe that it hastened what we all fought for, the
end of the War."
Belatedly, some Yankees helped fight the fires, but more than
two-thirds of the city was destroyed. Already choked with
refugees from the path of Sherman's army, Columbia's situation
became even more desperate when Sherman's army destroyed the
remaining public buildings before marching out of Columbia three
days later.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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