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:
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| 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.
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| 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."
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| The ruins of Orangeburg S.C., February 1865 |
