The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1875-06-29

neSSeS to this conversation between Gene
| rails Howard and Hampton.
E4th-In his official report of the event,
quoted above, Gen. Sherman goes some
thing beyond the usual scope of mill
tary paper in specifically charging the
destruction of the city upon Gen. Hamp-
ton. This specific charge was unfortu-
nate for General Sherman, in that all the
evidence goes to prove TINT the charge is
rash. Colonel Stone received the sur
render of the city from Mayor GOODWIN
rs carly in the day as 10 o'clock, and
took immcdintc possession of il, the Con-
fe,lerate troops having been withdrawn
before the surrender; and-notc the i'm
portancc of the connection the conia-
grafton that destroyed the city began
after dark, say after 3 o'clock, Colonel
Stone himself says about . o'clock. That
is to say. the Federal troop, had posses
sion of Columbia fully ten hours prcvi-
GUS to the fires that destroyed it; AMI
during this time Gen. Humpton's COM
mand was marching Northwnrtl towards
or beyond Winnsboro. But further
upon this point, Colonel Kennedy, of
the Seventeenth Corps, one of the ''slir-
miSh line" that entered the city ahead Of
Col. Stones communal, and one of Gen.
Sherman'S pet witnesses before the
Mixed Claims Commission, says i'll tcSt-
mony: II cannot for my life sec how
Wade Hampton and Dcaurcyard are So
positive thnt Sherman soldiers first set
fire to the cotton, for not one was near
it when the fire WAS started, and certain
ly neither Hampton nor Bcaurcyurd
were within gun-shot of either the cot
ton or the State House" This was be-
fore o'clock that morning. This glib
witness, in proving the distance of the
/ ar Il
fired, proves rather too much for his
General, who is trying to prove that
these same Confcdcrates did fire that
cotton. OF the fire itself, that which de-
stroyed the city, Col. Stone, after stating
that the time was "about OF clock, " SAYS:
"All Mt once fifteen or twenty flames,
from rs many different places along the
river, shot up, and in ten minutes the
fnte of Columbia was settled" Colonel
Stone, it will be remembered, is the
officer who, rs the official representative
of Gen. Sherman, received from Mayor
Goodwin the surrender Of Columbia.
5th-Genernl Sherman did not submit
before the Mixed Claims Commission the
testimony of Col. Stone, who was sent
by himself into Columbia about two
hours earlier the he (Gen. Shermnn) and
his main witnesses arrived there. For
not submitting this important testimony,
Gen. Sherman offers the frivolous pre-
Cth-Adjutant s. II. NJ Byers, in n
pamphlet entitled "What Saw in Dixie;
or, Sixteen Months in Rebel Prisons, +"
says: "The boys, too, were spreading the
confingrntion by firing the city in hun
tlred places." The boys seem to have
done that night exactly as Gen Shcr-
man told General IInlleck they generally
did, that is, '.do their work Tp pretty
well" for no one should complain Of n
hundred sepcratc applications of the in
cenliary torch ;,s not being 'nrctty we'll
in its way.
7th-Mr. Whitclaw Hcid's "OEio in
the War says of this destruction of Co.
lumbin: at was the most monstrous
barbarity Of the balbnrous march" This
opinion bears upon the character of the
net, not upon the question of who did it,
Sth-Bcforc tho aIiXcl Claims Commits
sion, scores of witnesses testified to tn.
fact that the soldiers of Shcrman's army
set fire to the city i'll hundreds of places
that they carried about torches, kerosene
or petroleum balls, and bucket, Of the
intlammable iiuid, lighting fires where
ever the wind would not carry the
flames fast enough; that this WAS done
often III the presence Of their officers,
who made no attempt to check or to
punish them: and that, Il, above shown
in Shermnn's letter to Hnllcck, General
Sherman selected his guards from n
corps notorious for their violent and de-
stro"ing habits, and that, with opportu-
mites furnished by the commanding
General himself, these men plundered
burned and robbed in the presence of
their officers, and all this with the pre-
vious, present and perfect knowledge Of
General Sherman himself.
9th Mr.. William Beverley Nash, Il
negro, then resident in Columbia, now Il
State Senator of South Carolina, who was
IL delegate to the Philadelphia Republi-
can Convention that nominated Prcsi-
dent 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
eyewitness of II race and Of party not
likely to stretch point in Gen. Hamp-
tons favor.
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