CHAPTER LXXVI.

SHERMAN IN SOUTH CAROLINA.

“The march of the Federals into our State,” says a writer in the “Columbia Phœnix,” “was characterized by such scenes of license, plunder, and conflagration as very soon showed that the threats of the Northern press, and of their soldiery, were not to be regarded as a mere _brutum fulmen_. Daily long trains of fugitives lined the roads, with wives and children, and horses and stock and cattle, seeking refuge from the pursuers. Long lines of wagons covered the highways. Half-naked people cowered from the winter under bush-tents in the thickets, under the eaves of houses, under the railroad sheds, and in old cars left them along the route. All these repeated the same story of suffering, violence, poverty, and nakedness. Habitation after habitation, village after village,—one sending up its signal flames to the other, presaging for it the same fate,—lighted the winter and midnight sky with crimson horrors.

“No language can describe, nor can any catalogue furnish, an adequate detail of the wide-spread destruction of homes and property. Granaries were emptied, and where the grain was not carried off, it was strewn to waste under the feet of the cavalry, or consigned to the fire which consumed the dwelling. The negroes were robbed equally with the whites of food and clothing. The roads were covered with butchered cattle, hogs, mules, and the costliest furniture. Valuable cabinets, rich pianos, were not only hewn to pieces, but bottles of ink, turpentine, oil, whatever could efface or destroy, were employed to defile and ruin. Horses were ridden into the houses. People were forced from their beds, to permit the search after hidden treasures.

“The beautiful homesteads of the parish country, with their wonderful tropical gardens, were ruined; ancient dwellings of black cypress, one hundred years old, which had been reared by the fathers of the Republic,—men whose names were famous in Revolutionary history,—were given to the torch as recklessly as were the rude hovels; choice pictures and works of art from Europe, select and numerous libraries, objects of peace wholly, were all destroyed. The inhabitants, black no less than white, were left to starve, compelled to feed only upon the garbage to be found in the abandoned camps of the soldiers. The corn scraped up from the spots where the horses fed, has been the only means of life left to thousands but lately in affluence. The villages of Buford’s Bridge, of Barnwell, Blackville, Graham’s, Bamberg, Midway, were more or less destroyed; the inhabitants everywhere left homeless and without food. The horses and mules, all cattle and hogs, whenever fit for service or for food, were carried off, and the rest shot. Every implement of the workman or the farmer, tools, ploughs, hoes, gins, looms, wagons, vehicles, was made to feed the flames.”

Passing northward through the State, by the way of Orangeburg, Columbia, and Winnsboro’, I heard, all along the route, stories corroborative of the general truthfulness of this somewhat highly colored picture. The following, related to me by a lady residing in Orangeburg District, will serve as a sample of these detailed narratives.

“The burning of the bridges by the Confederates, as the Yankees were chasing them, did no good, but a deal of harm. They couldn’t stop such an army as Sherman’s, but all they could do was to hinder it, and keep it a few days longer in the country, eating us up.

“It was the best disciplined army in the world. At sundown, not a soldier was to be seen, and you could rest in peace till morning. That convinces me that everything that was done was permitted, if not ordered.

“I had an old cook with me,—one of the best old creatures you ever saw. She had a hard master before we bought her, and she carried the marks on her face and hands where he had thrown knives at her. Such treatment as she got from us was something new to her; and there was nothing she wouldn’t do for us, in return.

“’For heaven’s sake, missus,’ says she, ‘bury some flour for the chil’n!’ I gave her the keys to the smoke-house, and told her to do what she pleased. ‘Send all the niggers off the place but me and my son,’ she says, ‘for I don’t trust ’em.’ Then she and her son buried two barrels of flour, the silver pitcher and goblets, and a box of clothes. But that night she dreamed that the Yankees came and found the place; so the next morning she went and dug up all the things but the flour, which she hadn’t time to remove, and buried them under the hog-pen. Sure enough, when the Yankees came, they found the flour, but her dream saved the rest. She was afraid they would get hold of her son, and make him tell, so she kept him in the chimney-corner, right under her eyes, all day, pretending he was sick.

“Some of the negroes were very much excited by the Yankees’ coming. One of our black girls jumped up and shouted, ‘Glory to God! de Yankees is comin’ to marry all we niggers!’ But they generally behaved very well. A black man named Charles, belonging to one of our neighbors, started with a load of goods, and flanked the Yankees for three days, and eluded them.

“A good many houses were burned in our neighborhood. Some that were occupied were set on fire two or three times, and the inhabitants put them out. The Yankees set the woods on fire, and we should have all been burnt up, if our negroes hadn’t dug trenches to keep the flames from reaching the buildings. General Sherman and his staff stopped at the house of a man of the name of Walker, in Barnwell District. While Mr. Walker was thanking him for protecting his property, he turned around, and saw the house on fire. General Sherman was very indignant. Said he, ‘If I could learn who did that, he should meet with condign punishment!’

“The foragers broke down all the broadside of our barn, and let the corn out; then they broke down all the broadside of the garden, and drove in. We had three hundred bushels of corn; and they took all but fifty bushels; they told me to hide that away. We had three barrels of syrup, and they took all but one gallon. They took eight thousand pounds of fodder, and three barrels of flour, all we had. We had twelve hundred pounds of bacon, and the soldiers took all but three pieces, which they said they left for the rest to take. We had twelve bushels of rough-rice; they left us three; and afterwards soldiers came in and threw shot in it, and mixed all up with sugar.

“They loaded up our old family carriage with bacon and sweet potatoes, and drove it away,—and that hurt me worse than all.

“They took our last potatoes. Three or four had just been roasted for the children: ‘Damn the children!’ they said; and they ate the potatoes.

“Out of forty hogs, they left us six. We had twenty-one head of cattle, and they left us five. The officers were very kind to us, and if we could have had them with us all the time, we should have saved a good deal of stuff. One Yankee lieutenant was with us a good deal, and he was just like a brother to me. He reprimanded the soldiers who spoke saucily to us, telling them to remember that they had mothers and sisters at home. He wanted me to put out a white flag, because my husband is a Northern man. But I said, ‘I’ll see this house torn to pieces first, for I’m as good a Rebel as any of them!’ He took three wagon-loads of corn from us: I thought that was mighty hard, if he cared anything for me.” It was he, however, who left her the fifty bushels, which nobody took.

“The soldiers were full of fun and mischief. Says one, ‘I’m going to the smoke-house, to sweeten my mouth with molasses, and then I’m coming in to kiss these dumb perty girls.’ They emptied out the molasses, then walked through it, and tracked it all over the house. They dressed up their horses in women’s clothes. They tore up our dresses and tied them to their horses’ tails. They dressed up the negroes that followed them. They strung cow-bells all around their horses and cattle. They killed chickens and brought them into the house on their bayonets, all dripping.

“Two came into the house drunk, and ordered the old cook to get them some dinner. She told them we had nothing left. ‘Go and kill a weasel!’ said they. She boiled them some eggs. They took one, and peeled it, and gave it to my little boy. ‘Here, eat that!’ said one. ‘But I’ve a good mind to blow your brains out, for you’re a d——d little Rebel.’ This man was from Connecticut, a native of the same town my husband came from. It would have been curious if they had met, and found that they were old acquaintances!

“Some behaved very well. One was handling the fancy things on the what-not, when another said, ‘It won’t help crush the Rebellion to break them.’ ‘I ain’t going to break them,’ he said, and he didn’t.

“My husband had moved up a large quantity of crockery and glass-ware from his store in Charleston, for safety. The Yankees smashed it all. They wouldn’t stop for keys, but broke open every drawer and closet. There wasn’t a lock left in the neighborhood.

“For three nights we never lay down at all. I just sat one side of the fireplace and another young lady the other, thinking what had happened during the day, and wondering what dreadful things would come next.

“She had helped me bury three boxes of silver in the cellar. The soldiers were all around them, and afterwards I found one of the boxes sticking out; but they didn’t find them. When they asked me for my silver I thought I’d lie once, and I told them I had none. ‘It’s a lie,’ says one. Then the old cook’s son spoke up, ‘Take the word of a slave; she’s nothing buried.’ On that they stopped looking.

“Some of the officers had colored girls with them. One stopped over night with his miss at the house of one of our neighbors. When they came down stairs in the morning, she was dressed up magnificently in Mrs. J——’s best clothes. They ordered breakfast; while they were eating, the last of the army passed on, and they were left behind. ‘Captain,’ says she, ‘aint ye wery wentur’some?’

“When one division was plundering us, the men would say, ‘We’re nothing; but if such a division comes along, you’re gone up.’

“Besides the fifty bushels of corn the lieutenant left us, I don’t think there were fifty bushels in the whole district. Our neighbors were jealous because we had been treated so much better than they. The Yankees didn’t leave enough for the children to eat, nor dishes to eat off of. Those who managed to save a little corn or a few potatoes, shared with the rest.

“We thought we were served badly enough. Of all my bedding, I had but two sheets and a pillow-case left. The Yankees didn’t spare us a hat or a coat. They even took the children’s clothes. We hadn’t a comb or a brush for our heads the next day, nor a towel for our hands. But, after all is said about Sherman’s army, I confess some of our own soldiers, especially Wheeler’s men, were about as bad.

“I never gave the negroes a single order, but they went to work, after the Yankees had passed, and cleared up the whole place. They took corn and ground it; and they went to the Yankee camp for meat, and cooked it for us. Our horses were taken, but they planted rice and corn with their hoes. There were scarcely any white men in the country. Most were in the army; and the Yankees took prisoners all who came under the conscript act. They carried some away who have never been heard from since.

“My husband was in Charleston, and for weeks neither of us knew if the other was alive. I walked seventeen miles to mail a letter to him. The old cook went with me and carried my child. From seven in the morning until dark, the first day, I walked twelve miles; and five the next. The old cook didn’t feel tired a bit, though she carried the baby; but she kept saying to me, ‘Do don’t set down dar, missus; we’ll neber git dar!’ We were two days coming home again.”