Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
What agenda did Simms have other than attempting to record the events of that night that Columbia burned. He had nothing personal to gain from lying.
His agenda was hatred for Sherman and "Yankees" and a wish to blame them for what happened in Columbia. His personal gain was selling magazine articles and a book from it.
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Originally Posted by Wild_Rose
I've never heard of anyone doing that, but I believe it's fair to say that everyone is prone to exaggerate every now and again, even Northerners and Union soldiers.
It's a true story that happened to a historian researching Sherman's March.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wild_Rose
Also, you have to realize that sometimes events become exaggerated in peoples minds. It doesn't mean they are liars, only that their perspective may be different from the next persons. But, the old proverb, "Where there's smoke there's fire" holds more than a little truth, generally, and the citizens of Columbia held the Union army responsible for largest part of the tragedy.
That's my point--events do become exaggerated in people's minds. This happened several times in the Civil War and Columbia is no different. As stories got passed around, people began to believe what they heard and strangely enough their minds began to invent new things to add to the tale. This is human nature as shown in the old "telephone" game where you start by whispering a message into one person's ear, then it gets passed around from person to person until it gets back to you and you find it has arrived as a completely different message.
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Originally Posted by Wild_Rose
Yes. Also note that he said, "About dusk the city was set on fire...". Set on fire, not began to burn but, "set on fire". Why would a Union soldier, in a camp a mile away, assume the city was "set on fire"?
The wind whipped up cotton embers and started new fires, southern civilians who had been in jail set fires, and drunken Union soldiers set some fires.
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Originally Posted by Wild_Rose
I was speaking from the Columbia citizen's point of view. I quoted Mary Chestnut and explained why she would have believed the city would be burned by Sherman. Those were not my personal feelings, but they would have been the logical thoughts of most Southern people at that time.
Which doesn't necessarily make it what happened.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wild_Rose
Other eyewitness' don't corroborate his account. Others claim there was nothing burning when Sherman's troops arrived other than the smoldering cotton, which sat innocently in the middle of the road after the Union troops extinguished the fires, until around dusk when all H*** broke loose and numerous fires started almost simultaneously.
Maj Chambliss was a confederate officer on the retreat from Columbia. You asked what reason Simms would have to lie and I told you, but I can't think of a single reason why Maj Chambliss would lie. Additionally, we have Wade Hampton himself telling us that the railroad depot blew up prior to his departure from the city. Are we to believe there were no fires associated with that? Sherman said he had to avoid burning cotton when he entered the city--not smoldering. The strong wind they had that night reignited the cotton and spread the burning cotton around several buildings.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wild_Rose
In this case it's a little late to start looking for credibility. That should have been done 140 years ago. The trail is cold and what Lucas is doing is re-writting history. He is ignoring any eyewitness account that conflicts with the image of innocence he is attempting to portray in Sherman.
Actually Prof. Lucas is setting the record straight from the distortions that were fed by lost cause mythologists, and his work corresponds with the earlier work of the great Civil War historian James Ford Rhodes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wild_Rose
I agree to a point with that assessment, however I do not believe it was an accident. It was intentional.
The weight of the best evidence we have is against that position.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wild_Rose
I believe that much is very clear. Also, troublesome are these unnammed Southern civilians. Who were they? Why were they set on burning Columbia? We can guess about their identities and motives all day long, but where is the proof?
I already gave you the name of one man several eyewitnesses identified as setting fires.
"General C. R. Woods, commander of the first division, fifteenth corps, wrote, February 21: 'The town was fired in several different places by the villains that had that day been improperly freed from their confinement in the town prison.' ...
"General Logan, commander of the fifteenth corps, said, in his report of March 31: 'The citizens had so crazed our men with liquor that it was almost impossible to control them.' ...
"'Some escaped prisoners,' wrote General Howard, commander of the right wing, April 1, 'convicts from the penitentiary just broken open, army followers, and drunken soldiers ran through house after house, and were doubtless guilty of all manner of villainies, and it is these men that I presume set new fires ****her and ****her to the windward in the northern part of the city. Old men, women, and children, with everything they could get, were herded together in the streets. At some places we found officers and kind-hearted soldiers protecting families from the insults and roughness of the careless. Meanwhile the flames made fearful ravages and magnificent residences and churches were consumed in a very few minutes.' All these quotations are from Federal offiers who were witnesses of the scene and who wrote their accounts shortly after the event, without collusion or dictation. Theuy wrote too before the knew that the question, Who burned Columbia? would be an irritating one in the after years. These accounts are therefore the best of evidence. It is not necessary to exclude one by another. All may be believed, leading us to the result that all the classes named had a hand in the sack and destruction of Columbia." [James Ford Rhodes, "Who Burned Columbia?" The American Historical Review, Vol VII, No. 3, April, 1902, pp. 492-493]
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wild_Rose
And what of Sherman's responsibility? Someone has to be responsible for the Union army's actions in Columbia. If not Sherman...who?
See the above.
"When the fire was well under way, Sherman appeared on the scene but gave no orders. Nor was it necessary, for Generals Howard, Logan, Woods, and others were laboring earnestly to prevent the spread of the conflagration. By their efforts and by the change and subsidence of the iwnd, the fire in the early morning of February 18 was stayed." [James Ford Rhodes, "Who Burned Columbia?" The American Historical Review, Vol VII, No. 3, April, 1902, p. 493]
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wild_Rose
How many Southerners, Columbians in particular, were on that commission?
The commission consisted of one British representative, one American representative, and the Italian minister at Washington. Two of the three, therefore, can be considered as neutral parties, and they unanimously agreed on their findings.
Perhaps I have lost the plot yet again, for I see an enormous difference between Mrs. Lee lamenting the desecration of family graves and the destruction of Southern property by the Union army; and Mrs. Sherman's belief that 'all Southerns should be herded like pigs into the ocean.'
Dawna
Dawna,
See the language she uses to describe Northerners. My apologies, but I've been unable to begin getting you additional quotations. I hope to get to that soon.
It's hard for me to imagine Lee to impress free blacks, when he wasn't a slaveowner himself.
Lee was indeed a slaveowner in his own right, and I'm not talking about the Custis slaves. He inherited slaves from his mother. One of those slaves, Billy Gardener, he rented to his cousin Hill Carter at Shirley Plantation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by olerebel
Grant showed common sense near the end of the war when he still had slaves, and was asked why he had not freed them. His reply was that good help was hard to find.
False on all counts. First of all, that is a fabricated quotation. Secondly, Grant owned only one slave in his life, William Jones, whom he freed in 1859. Julia Grant had the use of four of her father's slaves, but by January 1, 1863 they had all run off and were free. The Grants hired one of the former slaves, also named Julia, as a paid nurse in 1864.
Quote:
Originally Posted by olerebel
I think it was Cash who made a statement that if you don't want a war don't start one.
If several carloads of troops were coming to reinforce a position near my community, compared to several ships coming to reinforce Ft. Sumter, I would take out the position, like Beauregard did Ft. Sumter.
False again. Nobody was reinforcing Fort Sumter. The flotilla's mission, as confirmed by the orders transmitted to both Mercer and Fox, was to land provisions there only, as long as that landing was not resisted, and to land troops if it was resisted.
Quote:
Originally Posted by olerebel
Had the Federals left the South alone, it is doubtful that Southern cities would have burned, Southern women and children would have suffered as they did.
Had the confederate states not seceded and started the war to preserve slavery it is doubtful that Southern cities would have burned, or that Southern women and children would have suffered as they did.
Grant owned one slave for about a year when he was still struggling in St. Louis. He gave the man his freedom rather than selling him. Here is a man struggling to make a living and he gives away property worth several hundreds of dollars. "His" slaves were Julia's, and he weaned her of them during the war.
And actually the slaves weren't Julia's but rather her father's. There was never a transfer of ownership to Julia, and Grant had made it clear beforehand that if he ever got control of those slaves he would free them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ole
Lee was a slave owner. He inherited his father's slaves with the stipulation that they be freed within five years. "His" other slaves belonged to his wife.
Actually, Lee inherited his own slaves from his mother. You're confusing his father-in-law with his father. GWP Custis died in October of 1857, stipulating in his will that his slaves be freed within five years of his death and naming Lee as an executor of his will. Union occupation of Arlington early in the war took care of freeing many of those slaves, and Lee freed all but a handful of the rest in December of 1862. A few stayed in bondage in 1863 and 1864, but of course Lee had a lot on his mind then.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ole
Kind of nit-picking, but the old "Grant was a slaveowner and Lee was not" myth needs to be put away, never to be used again.
Ole
Actually, Lee inherited his own slaves from his mother. You're confusing his father-in-law with his father. GWP Custis died in October of 1857, stipulating in his will that his slaves be freed within five years of his death and naming Lee as an executor of his will.
If I recall, the terms of Custis' will gave Lee the option of immediately freeing the slaves, or keeping them for up to five years. Lee kept them as long as he could.
If I recall, the terms of Custis' will gave Lee the option of immediately freeing the slaves, or keeping them for up to five years. Lee kept them as long as he could.
Cedarstripper
Cedar,
The main point, which is being neatly swept under the proverbial rug, is that Gen. U.S. Grant, U.S. Army, was an official, card carrying slaveholder; if only for one year.
If I recall, the terms of Custis' will gave Lee the option of immediately freeing the slaves, or keeping them for up to five years. Lee kept them as long as he could.
Cedarstripper
Do you not also recall that Lee was bade by the will to keep the slaves until Arlington was on firm financial footing for a period up to five years? Custis was a notorious mis-manager of money and didn't leave the estate in solid financial standing. Odd that you forgot that single detail.
Lee kept the slaves as long as he was supposed to as dictated by the will.
Rose
__________________ "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names".--J.F.K.
The War Between the States established... This principle that the Federal Government is, through its courts, this final judge of its own powers.
-- Woodrow Wilson
Again we quibble over terms. 'Invasion.' Substitute 'Rebellion.' Again, it seems, the South cannot be held for it's own actions that brought on war, that started and caused the destruction and death you find so terrible. Stealing federal property, firing on ships and forts, this can be ignored, much like a bully striking matches and throwing them into peoples homes.
Never mind the firemen who lose their lives putting out the flames.
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
If I recall, the terms of Custis' will gave Lee the option of immediately freeing the slaves, or keeping them for up to five years. Lee kept them as long as he could.
Lee didn't really have many options. The terms of the will provided for legacies to each granddaughter as well as property to each grandson. Lee also got a small piece of property in the District of Columbia. The problem was the estate was broke. The legacies [$10,000 each] didn't exist. Lee had to work the plantation to put it back into good repair and raise the legacies. He used the slaves to do that, either working them on the plantation or renting them out to other farmers. By the terms of the will, the slaves had to be all manumitted by October of 1862, but Lee went to court and got a judgment that allowed him to keep them until the end of 1862, an additional 2 months or so. The war intervened, though, and upset all those well-laid plans.
The main point, which is being neatly swept under the proverbial rug, is that Gen. U.S. Grant, U.S. Army, was an official, card carrying slaveholder; if only for one year.
I don't see anyone sweeping that under the rug. He was a slaveholder for about a year before the war. At least two of us have mentioned it, and it's in the Grant biographies. How is that being swept under the rug?
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