February 9, 1865---Sherman at Orangeburg: "South Carolina must be destroyed!"

FEBRUARY 9. 1865:         

“Mrs. H.J.B.”, a Georgia native, fled that State to avoid Sherman’s March To The Sea. Settling with her sister in Orangeburg, South Carolina, she, this day, finds herself playing host to her Union nemesis who is using the house as a temporary headquarters. She makes note of their acerbic exchange in her diary: 

Here, a Southern lady, Mistress of the art of disdain, turns her head to Yankee scum

As I made my way to the fireplace my attention was attracted to one of the officers who sat in the corner with a map open on his knee. From the pictures I had from time to time seen of him I knew at once that this was General Sherman.    

I determined to feign ignorance so long as I could. The map proved to be a complete diagram of all the farms, roads and rivers in Orangeburg County. As I advanced towards him he raised his head abruptly:

“Whose farm is this, madam?”

“Dr. S’s. sir,” I replied.

Another officer, whom I afterwards learned was General Howard, standing near, questioned me at this point:

 “Is he a Mason?” 

“He is, sir,” I answered again.

“I want nothing but the truth, remember,” said Sherman again as abruptly and as offensively as before.

“Unlike yourself,” I answered hotly, “I am incapable of anything else, sir.” 

A slight flush of annoyance gathered upon his face for a moment, but in the same brusque, methodical manner he went on with the questioning:  “Is Dr. S. in the rebel army?”

 “He is a surgeon, sir, in the Confederate service.”

“In what command is he at present?”

“He is a member of a regiment that owns that glorious old hero, Joseph E. Johnston, as their commander-in-chief.” (Johnston, was not, in fact, in command of anything at this point in the war.)

“There is no need for such answers as these, le me assure you madame,” he said, for the moment losing control of himself. “Pray remember monosyllables are preferable, where there is no necessity for elaborate words.”

I bowed half mockingly.

“Are you a rebel soldier’s wife, madame?” he questioned again.

“I am the wife of a Confederate soldier, and glory in the thought” -the last words being rolled out with volume and an intensity that surprised even myself.

At this moment the book was shut up in a vicious snap, and the back of the hero of the “March to the Sea” was politely turned up me . . . . Sherman said sharply:

“I don’t think your presence is further needed here, madame. You may retire,” and putting on his hat he himself walked towards the door.

“Thank you, kindly, for the permission,” I said, with broad sarcasm, as he passed me.

A moment later the door closed upon his retreating form, and that was the first and the last time my eyes ever rested upon Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. 

There is little doubt that “Mrs. H.J.B.” was just a difficult with the red-haired General as she admits to being. Nearly everyone in South Carolina was. The State wherein Secessionism ran strongest, it was also the State wherein Secessionism lasted longest. Unable to do anything to deter Sherman’s March, South Carolinians nonetheless made it a point of honor to be as obstreperous to the Yankees as possible. 

Mother Nature too, seemed to be Secesh. Storms, cold, and driving rains had delayed Sherman’s entry into South Carolina for nearly a month. Once his forces had crossed into the State, weather conditions, which had briefly improved, worsened again.  Sherman was forced to put his engineers to work building corduroy roads across the muddy bottomlands and swamps in order to avoid being bogged down. The rate at which the Union Army constructed these causeways was unprecedented in the history of warfare and added to the growing fear of the local populations.

Sherman used the bad weather wisely; he had issued General Orders Number 15, decreeing that the newly Freed Men be given land and farm tools, and he had traveled to Beaufort, South Carolina and the Sea Islands, where he expropriated land from the local Secessionists and awarded it to the freed slaves. Returning briefly to Savannah, he had marshalled his forces and led them into the Palmetto State in early February. 

 

Although the majority of South Carolinians expected Sherman to follow the coast to Charleston, he moved inland through the poorer sections of the State.

 

An average Union soldier expressed nothing but contempt for the South Carolinians of the countryside: 

. . . We everywhere hear the fear expressed of "Negro equality," while no one ever expressed a fear of equality with this class of "Southern white trash." They are lower than the negro in every respect, not excepting general intelligence, culture, and morality. A man not acquainted with this larger population of the South can form an idea of it in their style of living and cleanliness, &c. They are not fit to be kept in the same sty with a well-to- do farmer's hogs in New England . . . every half mile we find a shanty with . . .  a stick chimney, three or four half naked children . . .  with an incrustation of dirt which entirely conceals their  natural color . . .  

To be fair, Yankees were not the only critics of the “Southern white trash” of the time. Among the most critical observers of poor southern whites was Alabama lawyer D.R. Hundley, whose 1860 book, Social Relations in Our Southern States divided southern whites into seven descending classes that ranged from the “southern gentleman” (i.e., the Planter Class) at the top to “poor white trash” at the very bottom. While Hundley divided these classes according to economic criteria, he also argued that “blood” influenced the different groups’ manners and habits --- the worst of which were displayed by the poor white trash. According to Hundley, “laziness” was the chief characteristic of poor whites:

They are about the laziest two-legged animals that walk erect on the face of the Earth . . . even their motions are slow, and their speech is a sickening drawl . . . all they seem to care for, is, to live from hand to mouth; to get drunk, provided they can do so without having to trudge too far after their liquor . . . we do not believe the worthless ragamuffins would put themselves to much extra locomotion to get out of a shower of rain; and we know they would shiver all day with cold, with wood all around them, before they would trouble themselves to pick it up and build a fire.

Whether Hundley’s specific criticisms applied broadly in 1860, there are, without any doubt, people who still choose to live as their ancestors did. Hundley would recognize them; Harper Lee’s pseudo-fictional Ewell clan in To Kill A Mockingbird are the acme (or nadir) of such folk.

21st Century Crackers, revelling in living in the 19th Century

Sherman was as unkind to South Carolina as South Carolina was to him. He ordered anything and everything in the path of his army destroyed --- unlike in Georgia, where he had made exceptions for residential homes, churches, hospitals, and critical services. His bummers went to work with a vengeance, burning everything, denuding the very woods, and setting grass fires where they could manage.

“South Carolina must be destroyed” Sherman insisted, and after just a week of devastation, South Carolinians realized that, “We are going to be wiped from the earth”:

"At McBride's plantation, where Sherman had his headquarters, the out-houses, offices, shanties, and surroundings were all set on fire before he left . . . In Georgia few houses were burned; here few escaped, and the country was converted into one vast bonfire. The pine forests were fired; the resin factories were fired; the public buildings and private dwellings were fired. The middle of the finest day looked black and gloomy, for a dense smoke rose on all sides clouding the very heavens - at night the tall pine trees seemed so many huge pillars of fire. The flames hissed and screeched, as they fed on the fat resin and dry branches, imparting to the forest a most fearful appearance . . . The ruins of homesteads of the Palmetto State will long be remembered .  . . South Carolina has commenced to pay an installment, long overdue, on her debt to justice and humanity.

Only an occasional town like Orangeburg, where the General established a supply dump and a smallpox hospital, were spared in the least, and nearly everything was burned anyway:

"Orangeburg contains about 800 people, and was, before we entered it a fine little place with a fair proportion of churches, small cotton brokers' establishments, &c &c . . . If the town had been built on purpose for a bonfire it could not have been bettered. All that could be done was to watch it on the windward side and the outskirts of the town. We occupied the town at 2 P. M. and at four one third or one half of the town was on fire and burning with the greatest rapidity. I think one half of the body of the town was destroyed. The fires were not so extensive as the one in Atlanta, but more grand and beautiful."

The ruins of Orangeburg S.C., February 1865