“reign of terror did not fairly begin till night” — Columbia SC Commemorative Silver Half Dollar Coin

Today, the Columbia SC Commemorative Silver Half Dollar Coin remembers the surrender and subsequent burning of the city 152 years ago.

After the fighting the day before, on the morning  of February 17, 1865, the Confederate forces left the area. The mayor in a letter to Sherman surrendered the city and asked for protection for the people and their property.

An excerpt from the book Memorabilia and Anecdotal Reminiscences of Columbia, S. C.  by Julian A. Selby and William Gilmore Simms, published in 1905 provides insight into the burning of the city:

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It may be well to remark that the discipline of the soldiers, upon their first entry into the city, was perfect and most admirable. There was no disorder or irregularity on the line of march, showing that their officers had them completely in hand.

They were a fine looking body of men, mostly young and of vigorous formation, well clad and well shod, seemingly wanting in nothing. Their arms and accoutrements were in bright order. The negroes accompanying them were not numerous, and seemed mostly to act as drudges and body servants.

They groomed horses, waited, carried burdens, and, in almost every instance under our eyes, appeared in a purely servile, and not a military, capacity. The men of the West treated them generally with scorn or indifference, sometimes harshly, and not unfrequently with blows.

But, if the entrance into town and while on duty, was indicative of admirable drill and discipline, such ceased to be the case the moment the troops were dismissed. Then, whether by tacit permission or direct command, their whole deportment underwent a sudden and rapid change.

The saturnalia soon began. We have shown that the robbery of persons of the citizens and the plunder of their homes commenced within one hour after they had reached the Market Hall. It continued without interruption throughout the day.

Sherman, at the head of his cavalry, traversed the streets everywhere — so did his officers. Subsequently, these officers were everywhere on foot, yet beheld nothing which required the interposition of authority.

And yet robbery was going on at every corner — in nearly every house.

Citizens generally applied for a guard at their several houses, and, for a time, these guards were allotted them. These might be faithful or not. In some cases, as already stated, they were, and civil and respectful; considerate of the claims of women, and never trespassing upon the privacy of the family; but, in numbers of cases, they were intrusive, insulting and treacherous — leaving no privacy undisturbed, passing without a word into the chambers and prying into every crevice and corner.

But the reign of terror did not fairly begin till night. In some instances, where parties complained of the misrule and robbery, their guards said to them, with a chuckle: “This is nothing. Wait till to-night, and you’ll see h—ll.”

Among the first fires at evening was one about dark, which broke out in a filthy purlieu of low houses, of wood, on Gervais street, occupied mostly as brothels. Almost at the same time, a body of- the soldiers scattered over the Eastern outskirts of the city, fired severally the dwellings of Mr. Secretary Trenholm, General Wade Hampton, Dr. John Wallace, Mr. J. U. Adams, Mrs. Starke, Mr. Latta, Mrs. English, and many others.

There were then some twenty fires in full blast, in as many different quarters, and while the alarm sounded from these quarters, a similar alarm was sent up almost simultaneously from Cotton Town, the northernmost limit of the city, and from Main street in its very centre, at the several stores or houses of O. Z. Bates, C. D. Eberhardt, and some others, in the heart of the most densely settled portion of the town; thus enveloping in flames almost every section of the devoted city.

At this period, thus early in the evening, there were few shows of that drunkenness which prevailed at a late hour in the night, and only after all the grocery shops on Main street had been rifled.

The men engaged in this were well prepared with all the appliances essential to their work. They did not need the torch.

They carried with them, from house to house, pots and vessels containing combustible liquids, composed probably of phosphorus and other similar agents, turpentine, &c.; and, with balls of cotton saturated in this liquid, with which they also overspread floors and walls, they conveyed the flames with wonderful rapidity from dwelling to dwelling.

Each had his ready box of Lucifer matches, and, with a scrape upon the walls, the flames began to rage. Where houses were closely contiguous, a brand from one was the means of conveying destruction to the other.

The winds favored. They had been high throughout the day, and steadily prevailed from southwest by west, and bore the flames east ward. To this fact we owe the preservation of the portions of the city lying west of Assembly street.

The work, begun thus vigorously, went on without impediment and with hourly increase throughout the night. Engines and hose were brought out by the firemen, but these were soon driven from their labors — which were indeed idle against such a storm of fire — by the pertinacious hostility of the soldiers; the hose was hewn to pieces, and the firemen, dreading worse usage to themselves, left the field in despair.

Meanwhile, the flames spread from side to side, from front to rear, from street to street, and where their natural and inevitable progress was too slow for those who had kindled them, they helped them on by the application of fresh combustibles and more rapid agencies of conflagration.

By midnight, Main street, from its northern to its southern extremity, was a solid wall of fire. By 12 o’clock, the great blocks, which included the banking houses and the Treasury buildings, were consumed; Janney’s (Congaree) and Nickerson’s Hotels; the magnificent manufactories of Evans & Cogswell — indeed, every large block in the business portion of the city; the old Capitol and all the adjacent buildings were in ruins.

The range called the “Granite” was beginning to flame at 12, and might have been saved by ten vigorous men, resolutely working.

At 1 o’clock, the hour was struck by the clock of the Market Hall, which was even then illuminated from within. It was its own last hour which it sounded, and its tongue was silenced forevermore.

In less than five minutes after, its spire went down with a crash, and, by this time, almost all the buildings within the precinct were a mass of ruins.

Very grand, and terrible, beyond description, was the awful spectacle. It was a scene for the painter of the terrible.

It was the blending of a range of burning mountains stretched in a continuous series for more than a mile. Here was Ætna, sending up its spouts of flaming lava; Vesuvius, emulous of like display, shooting up with loftier torrents, and Stromboli, struggling, with awful throes, to shame both by its superior volumes of fluid flame.

The winds were tributary to these convulsive efforts, and tossed the volcanic torrents hundreds of feet in air. Great spouts of flame spread aloft in canopies of sulphurous cloud — wreaths of sable, edged with sheeted lightnings, wrapped the skies, and, at short intervals, the falling tower and the tottering wall, avalanche-like, went down with thunderous sound, sending up at every crash great billowy showers of glowing fiery embers.

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The Columbia SC Commemorative Silver Half Dollar Coin shows with an artist’s image of the city burning in February 1865.

Columbia SC Commemorative Silver Half Dollar Coin