The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1866-05-17
The Burning of Columbia.

From the Daily NeaDs .... .
There are few journals in the country that can
compete with the Tribune in the ingenious
sophistry it brings to bear on questions which it
feels constrained to discuss, but in which dis
closure of the actual facts would be ruinously
fatal to the hypothesis it seeks to sustain. It's
article of Tuesday on General Wade Hampton
is case in point; and the GOODNESS with which
it dodges the issue, while charging that General
Hampton is evading it, is refreshing to contem-
plate. The substance of General Sherman's
charge is that cotton was fired in the streets of
Columbia by Hampton's orders and that the
flames from the burning cotton, so fired,
communicated TO the adjoining buildings, and
SO produced the conflagratlon which destroyed
the town.
Now, General Hampton says, in replying to
this charge, 81 deny emphatically that any cot
ton was fired in Columbia by my order.r And
the Tribune calls this "evading" the charge.
What would tie Tribune have? The question is
not as TO General Hamptons wishes or inten-
tions but as to his acts. 1t is matter of no
sort of consequence whether General Hampton
ordered the cotton to be burned or not unless
it can be shown that the cotton was so burned.
But General Hampton went still further IN his
statement. He admitted having once given an
order for burning the cotton, but stated that he
had Countermanded it, at the instance of Gene
raj beau egard, and that, consequently, it was
uGNGI eAGCulcu. IL JuG issue is not ldlIly ana
squarely met, then there never yet has been an
issue fairly made up.
Columbia was burned not by means of cotton
bales, but by means of balls OF yarn, stepped in
turpentine ard other combustibles, which were
set on fire and thrown into private dwellings, all
over the city. And il was Federal soldiers who
cut the hose attached to the fire engines and pre-
vented any successful attempt to eXtinguish the
flames. As for the explosion at the depot of the
South Carolina Railroad, that was the result of
an accident. The building was tull of stores of
every description, which we're abandoned to the
popuace when the Confederate troops CON-
menced evacuating the town, and spark from
the pipe OF careless forager falling upon box
of cartridges, the top of which had been
wrenched off, produced the catastrophe.
1t IS amusing to see the squirmiug of the
radical press on this subject. It's editors
affected, at first, to see nothing atrocious in
the burning OF Columbia and It's attendant
horrors, and were rather inclined to make
merry over the calamities of ''the Rebeis,n
But now that public opinion has emphatically
condemned the act, they are making a despe-
rate effort to cast the odium of it upon Gene
raj Hampton. How desperate the effort is
may be inferred from the character of the ey.
dence on which they rely to sustain their absurd
charges. The Tribune concludes its article by
the queston:-"lf it was right Tor the Rebels
to burn, why would it have been wrong for
Sherman" The answer is simple. Columbia
belonged to the Confederates and did not belong
to General Sherman. The burning of Moscow
immortalzed Rostopchin; but ii French soldiers
had done the deed il would have been infamy
for Bonaparte.