The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1914-06-25

BENTON, La, THURSDAY, JUNE %, 1914.
THE BURNING. OF COLUMBIA. SC.
An Eye Witness Tells of Rough Treatment
by Sherman's Men of Helpless Women
Who Had to Flee for Their Lives.
The clipping that appears below is from
the Confederate Veteran Edition of the
Spartanburg Herald, published in Spartan
burg, s. c., and dated August II, 1910.
1t is a page of unrecorded history, its
facts setting to rest the query, Who burned
Columbia? Its narrator, then on the scene,
is we'll qualified to answer and does so in
not uncertain terms, placing brand of
shame upon the name and deeds of the
Wanted Federal general, Sherman. The
craven, paltry and brutal deeds herein re-
lated would have at one day fired the minds
of the youth of our Southland as would a
burning fagot basket of lint Their mere
mention would have prompted deeds of
reckless courage in defense of the perse-
cuted, weak and unprotected, and older
heads would have joined them in shedding
their life's blood in abetting and leading
their every charge-in their every thrust
at the dastardly hirelings who thus gloried
in plundering and "making war hell"
That these things did actually result is
patent, and we of the South glory in the
memory of it. We have nothing to regret.
The writing of this at this late day, when
peace has 80 long smiled over our land,
when we have become readjusted nation,
when the South has been awarded its just
need of praise for valor in a struggle in
which she was outnumbered but not outgen-
eraled, when the tendency has become to
place chvalrous deeds and the memory of
those who fought we'll and fair to the fore,
and give to those who stood not for these
things but were wont to denude our country
and insult women and children as oppor-
tunilies were presented only stigmata of
bastard and coward, can do no harm, and
the republication of the clipping that fol-
lows will not serve now to inflame the mind
of our youth-that is, in not that degree
that it once would-but it will serve its good
purpose in setting Alright an historical fact,
and in citing the untutored to the unfair
methods, wholly void of principle or any
sense of business, often resorted to by
those who came down from the North and
their hordes of hire1ings.
The subject of this sketch was born in
Charleston and will be ninety years of age
if she survives until the 21st day of No..
vember, 1910. She is remarkable exam
pie of we'll preserved old age, and except
that her hearing is considerably impaired,
she is in possession of her faculties and
likewise of an unusual degree of activity.
She has always exhibited vigor of express
sion and brightness of mind, and to this
day can relate and picture to the nearer
much that is instructive and interesting
concerning the old life and people of Car
DINA. She had the best education of her
time, and remembers gratefully the years
spent under the instructions of the Misses
Ramsay, sisters of the historian, David NJ.
Ramsay.
Mrs. Adger's father, Andrew Moffett,
was born in Dunse, Scotland, and migrated
to this country when youth, establishing
himself in business in Charleston, where,
marrying Miss Anna Reid, he reared a
family which continues to hold the respect
and confidence of the community; amongst
his grandsons being George H. Moffett,
the distinguished corporation counsel of
Charleston, and Commander William Adger
Moffett, of the Unitid States Navy. In
the year 1910 Margaret Moffett married
William Adger, a man of much force of
character, and business capacity, who,
however, died in the prime of life while on a
BUSINESS trip to New York, accompanied
by his wife in the year 1853, leaving her the
mantle of widowhood, which she has never,
through all the long years, desired to lay
aside.
This lady has from her early youth been
a faithful and pious Christian and with
such antecedents, it goes almost without
saying, that she is an ardent Presbyterian.
Her name has an honored place on the roll
of Flynn's Church in Charleston.
Mrs. Adger furnished two sons to the
sacred Southern cause, James, the elder,
being enlisted with the gallant Charleston
Light Dragons, and received wound in
the top OF the heap, when the Dragons
sustained the brunt of the Federal attack
at Hawe's Shop in Virginia in 1863, from
which he never fully recovered, and which
caused his premature death in 1872.
Andrew Moffett Adger, the younger son,
joined Hagood's Brigade near the close of
the war, though mere youth, and saw
service amid the final scenes of the tragedy
in both the Carolinas. The canteen carried
by him is still the object of mothers care,
encased in chamois skin.
About two years after her husband s
death Mrs. Adger purchased the home at
Pendleton of the late Mrs. John C. Calhoun,
and calling the place ''Duanne," occupied
it for short period.
During the latter part of the war the
family refugeed in Darlington County, near
Huntsville, and their abode was visited re-