Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Civil War 20150308

Thanks especially to jessica who worked with me whose idea it was to do something for this commemoration. We met over lunch and from there it grew. Then we partnered with Historic Columbia. But sponsoring this event also is the History Center at the university of South Carolina. And thanks to tom lincoln and mark van drill for all you did to make this a success. Another contributor was the graduate school of the university of South Carolina. Thank you, all of you for your help and support. We brought four scholars together, some of them coming through sleet and snow last night, delayed at airports, but theyre all here and we are meeting almost exactly at the time, 15 years ago that the union troops were crossing the river and coming in towards the city, toward that moment at 10 00 oclock a. M. In the morning when the city was formerly surrendered and the troops then came down what is today Market Street and were meeting here on Market Street. Im not an expert on this event in civil war history. I have written a book on the civil war called the calls of all nation and International History of the American Civil War. Im going to make a few comments from outside the nation about the International Context of this event. But i want to spend some time just before introducing the speakers this morning to talk about the Historical Context of this day. February 17 was a day of terror and destruction of disaster and vengeance. It was also a day of liberation of emancipation and the beginning of peace. It was a day of reckoning for the birthplace of secession. It was here the winter of 1860 that the South Carolina Secession Convention initially met before they moved to charleston where they passed the resolutions to withdraw from the union. Many of the speakers will be addressing the legacy of february 17. Allow me to take a few minutes to provide Historical Context for the events leading up to that day and surrounding it. After lincolns stunning victory in november 1864, it was clear to everyone that the union was going to sustain the war to its bitter end. Not only to defeat the rebellion militarily, but also now to destroy slavery which the republicans saw as the root cause of the rebellion. The stakes of war had heightened tremendously by this time. At the end of january Congress Passed the 13th amendment which would end slavery everywhere and forever in the United States. It would need to be ratified by the states of the union, three quarters of them and whether or not the south would be included in that was up for grabs up for interpretation. In mid january, january Tecumseh Sherman issued special field order number 15 which promised to confiscate abandoned lands in the low country and redistribute them to the newlyfreed former slaves in the lake country at 40acre parcels. It was the origins of the 40 acres and a mule idea. The world was watching a new kind of warfare unfold in the american south. Massive citizen armies pulled from the civilian populations of two democratic societies, nearly 3 million men in arms, 10 of the combined population. No one had told them about the Democratic Peace theory which is so popular in the washington circles these days. Shermans march, and particularly the burning of columbia, is much about young men in war and armies spread out and uncontrolled, pillage, destroying wreaking vengeance upon helpless civilians. But there was also strategic purpose to the destruction. That is they aimed at destroying the capacity of the south to wage war to destroy railroads and factories to emancipate and arm the slaves. But the march was also designed to demoralize the south, to demoralize the civilian population in particular. And to demonstrate to the southern people that also to european powers here is my International History that the con fed city could no longer defend itself. Confederate government buildings would be destroyed, along with military facilities, railroads, and the homes of confederate leaders to demonstrate the power of the union in its occupied territory. These were strategically far getted for destruction. In americas war with itself the world witnessed the first fatal steps on that road toward total war that would unfold more fully in the 20th century. Wars once fought between armies on distant battlefields now exposed women, slaves, civilians as never before to what sherman called the hard hand of war. The burning of columbia took place exactly two weeks before the february 3 peace negotiations that took place at hampton road. I think thats an important precedent to what happened on february 17. Confederate commissioners were sent to hampton roads, lincoln and sued met with them on the river queen and negotiated four hours. The possibility of peace on february 3. As the confederate commissioners came through the lines soldiers from both sides came out of their trenches and were chanting peace, peace, peace. Loud voices, war weary armies on both sides hoping for the best. But there would be no peace. Jefferson davis had no intention of surrendering. Even as the Confederate Army began deserting in massive numbers. Davis had a secret plan. In december he and the secretary of state for the confederacy had sent duncan kenner, a wealthy louisiana slave holder to europe in a lastditch effort to safety confederacy by offering to emancipate the slaves in exchange for foreign recognition and aid. As shermans Army Advanced toward columbia, kenner was midway across the atlantic to meet with napoleon iii and lord palmerson in britain. Even after richmond fell on april 2 to go ahead a little bit here, Jefferson Davis refused to surrender. He took his government by rail and by wagon and then by horseback and on foot into the carolinas and finally into georgia and the idea here was that if britain or france were going to intervene there had to be a government that they would recognize. So he was doing all he could to hold it together. Even after lees surrender at appomattox on april 9 davis continued to maintain this government in exile. Lincolns assassination a week later was intended by its perpetrators to reignite the souths will to fight. General wade hampton pleaded with Jefferson Davis on april 22, do not give up the fight. We are not conquered, he said. If you should propose to cross the mississippi, i can bring many good men to escort you to over. If texas will hold out or will seek the protectorate of max millionian, we can make head against the enemy. So they were going to go join the french who were protecting max millionian and take a last stand in texas. Davis responded by writing to his wife and saying that he was heading for mexico where they might have the world from which to choose. Now, back to february 17 columbia was surrendered as i said on this morning, 150 years ago. Until then, the Confederate Military had fought forces south of the city on the creek. They shelled their encampment the night before on the west bank of the broad river. They burned bridges across the rivers into the city. Confederate general hampton promised that he would defend the city block by block if he had to. The civilians fled in panic, jamming into railroad cars, going by wagon horseback, on foot, to get out of the city because they feared not just shermans troops, but feared a horrific urban battle was about to take place. Many that were left behind now cheered the arrival of the union army something that we might not expect. But one union witness described it this way. General she wereman, accompanied by several other generals their staffs and orderlies formed a cavalcade and rode into the city to the scene of excitement. Ladies crowded the windows and balconies waving banners and handkerchiefs. Negroes were grouped along the street cheering, singing and dancing in wild exuberance of their freedom. One of them shouted, at last, at last our saviors. Also among those welcoming sherman were the union p. O. W. S, officer, kept in nearby camp on the other side of the river and had been removed earlier to the lunatic asylum where they were kept encamped and in prison. That scene of celebration was to change dramaticcally. Alt ingredients for disaster were there. Young soldiers celebrating victory, disciplined by union commanders, lots of whiskey some of it supplied by the civilians, and pent up desire for revenge against South Carolina and columbia in particular. And then there was fire. High winds, a lethal combination of willful destruction and vengeance together with a force of nature. There were investigations, charges, countercharges. Its essentially a debate that is lost in the fog of war. Whoever set the fire it burned through the night and into the Early Morning of february 18. Smoke the glow could be seen for miles. The sun came up on a city in ruins with blackened chimneys and fragments balls standarding in the rubble. That morning was also the terrible end of a long and costly war for columbia and for its people. It was the coming of peace and the painful rebirth of a new city and a new south. William faulkner writing of a similar day of destruction in oxford mississippi, which was burned to the ground in its center described the blackened jagged topless, jumbles of brick wall enclosing like a ruined jaw the columns were blackened and stained. They were only blackened and stained, being tougher than fire. Now the town was though instance slated by fire or cauterized by fire from fury and turmoil. So in effect, it was an advance of appomattox. Only the undefeated undefeatable women vulnerable only to death resisted, endured, irreconcilable. Soon the soldiers were straggle ing back. A footlike transon horses in faded and patched and at times obviously stolen clothing, proceeded by no flag, no drums, and following not even by two men to keep step with one another. In coats baring in glitter of golden braid and scab backwards in which no sword reposed. They returned home to a homefront that had already surrendered so that in the almost faded twilight of the land, the knell of appomattox made no sound. That was faulkner. I think that he would have been even more inspired had he lived in columbia instead of oxford. Its my pleasure now to introduce our first speaker and ill introduce each of them. At the end of their four talks, well turn it over to questions, comments from any of you and we have plenty of time for that. So keep your questions ready and we will turn to those at the end. Our first speaker is ann sarah ruben, associate professor of history and director of the center for digital history and education at the university of maryland, baltimore county. She received her ab from Princeton University and ma and ph. D. From the university of virginia. Her first book is a study on confederate nationalism published by unc in 2005. It received the avery oak raven award from the organization of american historians a very prestigious prize for the most original book on the civil war era. Shes recently been president of the society of civil war historians. Her most recent book is one of great interest to all of you and it is through the heart of dixie shermans march in american memory. Its a study of the march and the way that americans would remember this march. It will be on sale afterwards. I encourage you to bring your credit card. Shes also produced a online companion to the book, www shermansmarch. Arg. Lets give a warm welcome to anne rubin. [ applause ] thank you all very much for coming and i also want to offer my thanks to jessica and don doyle and also tom brown for inviting me and for being such wonderful hosts. Im really honored to be back in columbia for this most significant of anniversary. Who burned columbia . If we knew the definitive answer, im not entire leisure wed all be sitting here today. We know who started many significant fires in history. We blame mrs. Olearys cow for the great chicago fire, or we did. Now apparently we blame peg leg sullivan, a milk thief. The great fire of london in 1666 began in a bakery in pudding lane. We blame the british for burning washington, d. C. In 1814. And the earthquake for San Francisco in 1906. Maybe we dont know because this particular fire happened in the middle of the civil war. But we do know that the union army burned atlanta and that retreating confederates set richmond ablaze. Who burned columbia . Sherman and his fiendish hell hounds wrote teenager emma laconte in her diary. Sherman and his demons, wrote poet William Gilmore sims. Sherman, and his army of villains low bad, counsel scoundrels, wrote another. What did sherman say in reply to these and similar charges . In his official report dated april 4, 1865, sherman blamed confederate general wade hampton for the conflagration. As he explained hampton ordered all cotton, public and private should be moved into the streets and fired to prevent us making use of it. But bales were cut open freed from their ropes and bagging and as a result tufts of cotton were blown about, lodging in the trees and against houses so as to resemble a snow storm and these piles were burning. As night fell and the wind picked up the fire spread beyond the efforts of Union Soldiers to control them. Indeed sherman argued, Union Soldiers deserved praise for saving so much of the city and for caring for the newly homeless. Furthermore, sherman went on in his report and this i think is really the root of so much anger and resentment. And without hesitation, he wrote, i charge general wade hampton with having burned his own city of columbia not with malicious intent or as the manifestation of a silly roman stoicism, but from folly and want of sense and filling it with lint, cotton and tinder. Not only did general wade hampton burn columbia, but he didnt even do it for a good reason, is what sherman seems to be saying here. Its not out of a concerted desire to use fire to stop sherman and his men, but its from foolishness, like a careless boy playing with matches. This wasnt just placing blame. This was an insult, an assault on Wade Hamptons honor. Sherman did admit to the presence of some union men fanning the flames although he does so nonchalantly. His men, his officers, worked only to put out the flames he explained, and those who didnt do that were most likely, as he put it, others not on duty including the officers who had long been imprisoned there. In short, colombians brought this vengeance on themselves. There might have been some bad apples in blue adding to the trouble, but the key fact here also is that none of this was done by orders. Not surprisingly, other Union Soldiers and officers echoed shermans claims. The destruction of the city was against the wishes of our commanders and was originally owing to the fires set by their own people and dealt with with the expectation that the city would burn wrote thomas ward osborne on february 17. How men can or could be such fools as not to expect the city to burn up when a pile of cotton bales 200 yards long was set on fire in the main street would all the cords cut as was the case is more than i can tell. And osborne continued, on the other hand why Johnston Beauregard Hampton and wheeler should be such unmitigated fools as to wish to burn columbia is more strange. Did i know the facts to be as i have stated, as i was one of the first to enter the city and have been here since. So osborne is very clear about this. And like osborne two officers on shermans staff made much the same connection. In a march 12, 1865 diary entry major hitchcock emphasized the degree to which columbia burned, not by orders, but expressly against orders and in spite of the utmost effort on our part to save it. In addition to the cotton hitchcock also mentioned the large quantities of liquor available in the city and as don mentioned also, often given directly to the soldiers. In hitchcocks view, the fire came partly by accident from the burning cotton partly by design by our escaped prisoners and by our drunken men. Major George Ward Nichols told a similar tale in the story of the great march, one of the First Published histories of shermans march, burning cotton, former prisoners given liquor by designing citizens. What hes saying is that the civilians in columbia purposely gave the soldiers liquor because they knew what would happen. As for Sherman Nichols stated whatever may have been the cause of the disaster, the dire full result is deprecated by general sherman emphatically. For however heinous the crimes of the people against our common country, we do not wage war against women and children and helpless persons. So what we see here from sherman and osborne and hitchcock and nichols is this shifting of blame away from sherman and his regular soldiers to the confederates, not just the generals, but even ordinary people ordinary colombians. This isnt really seem that surprising in a way. Who would admit to starting a fire like this . The implicating factor in that is that sherman never disavowed ordering that atlanta be burned. So why would sherman take ownership . Would he say yeah i burned atlanta, i issued that order for atlanta and disavow the other . An interesting question. One thing is certainly true. For about a decade, sherman consistently blamed the fire on Wade Hamptons ordering that the cotton be burned. He does this in a variety of forms. In response to a petition from congress to congress rather, a citizen of columbia petitioned Congress Demanding compensation for his property destroyed in the fire. And sherman reiterated his belief that the burning cotton started the fire and since hampton ordered this is shermans language language that on the approach of the yankee army all the cotton should thus be burned and from what i saw myself, i have no hesitation in saying that he was the cause of the destruction of your city. In response to this, this exchange was published in a newspaper, and then wade hampton got into the mix in order to defend himself. He wrote an interesting letter to maryland senator johnston and he explains why he has to write to a maryland senator. 1866 in South Carolina doesnt actually have a senator right now. He emphatically denied ordering that the cotton be fired. He says that the citizens set fire to the bales and he also denies interestingly, that there was any cotton on fire at all when federal troops entered the city. So hes completely disavowing any involvement. In fact, hampton charged back i pledge myself to prove that i gave a positive order by direction of general beauregard that no cotton should be fired that not one bale was on fire when shermans troops took possession of the city, that he promised protection to the city, and that, in spite of his solemn promise, he burned the city to the ground deliberately systematically, and atrociously. And what i think is so interesting about this exchange is that there is this real kind of personal tone to it. This is personal now. This is about honor, this is about reputation. This is about truth telling. Sherman always seemed to have the upper hand in this exchange. He cared less about his reputation or maybe he felt that these accusations didnt actually do any harm to his reputation. He almost approaches the proceedings with a little bit of a twinkle in his eye. In an 1872 deposition before the mixed commission of british and american claims sherman explained that he knew from the start that he would be blamed for the fire in columbia and that from the start, he wanted to set the record straight and this is his defense if i had made up my mind to burn columbia, i would have burned it with no more feeling than i would a common prairie dog village. But i did not do it. And therefore, i want that truth to be manifest. Once again he lays the primary blame at the feet of hampton. Once again he acknowledges that some soldiers might have engaged in mischief, but that they did not start the fires. And i think hes actually being quite honest here. If he had wanted to burn columbia, he would have burned columbia. He did it in other places. He made these kinds of orders. So if he says he didnt do it, he says he didnt do it. Why am i belaboring this point . In part because of what happened next. So the prairie dog village quote was 1872. In 1875, sherman published his memoirs. They really are a literary reflection of the man himself. Theyre very direct. Theyre candid. In many places they are written to settle scores explicitly. And sherman as he had done consistently for a decade denied ordering that the fires be set blamed them on the cotton set ablaze. He describes meeting with various women in columbia, offering them food and protection using this as evidence that he personally bore no malice towards columbia and its citizens and that he was not the one who torched it. His logic is basically, if i had burned columbia why would i help everybody who was burned out of columbia . But then he tips his hand a little bit, explaining that in his official report so that first passage i had read to you back from 1865 explaining in his official report on the fire that quote i distinctly charged it to general wade hampton and confess i did so pointedly to shake the faith of his people in him, for he was, in my opinion boastful, and professed to be the special champion of South Carolina. So there it is. I did it pointedly to shake the faith of his people in him, the psychological warfare that so much of shermans march was about. I think its this quote, this passage that explains why this controversy still endures. This one almost offhanded remark doesnt calm shermans critics. Instead, it inflames them. Sorry, no pun intended. In many ways, its the burning of columbia that cemented certificatemans reputation as an uncaring demon. At least with atlanta, sherman had already evicted all of the civilians. That wasnt so caring either but truth be told, sherman was, in the phrase more careless with fire in South Carolina than in georgia. And Jefferson Davis leads this attack on sherman in his rise and fall of the confederate government, charging sherman with hypocrisy defending Wade Hamptons honor, and noting tartly that were this the only instance of such barbarity, perpetrated by general shermans army his effort to escape the responsibility might be more successful because more plausible. Davis isnt really hes not entirely wrong about that. I think sherman with this one little passage undermines a lot of his own credibility and its all happening shermans memoirs come out in 1875. There is books dead indicating to debunking his memoirs. Its all as a lost cause is really flowering and i think its this moment that transforms sherman into the great villain of the lost cause. Whats interesting too, is that there is a really wide divergent between historians and the popular imagination or the popular understanding of this question. Historians beginning with James Ford Rhodes in 1902, through john gibson and john barrett in the 1950s and 60s marion lucas book, which is for sale outside i noticed which was published in 1976 all have drawn the same conclusion about columbia. Both sides at fault. The confederates did fire the cotton and the union did let that cotton burn. There is more than enough blame to go around. And yet, this doesnt seem to be a good enough explanation for so many people. There is almost there is a sort of passive voice inherent right, columbia burned, but nobody really lit the match . Is it because if you hold to this explanation where everybody is to blame, then nobody is to blame . There is a lack of a villain. Is there some utility to the longstanding sense of victimization that i would argue has permeated columbia in a real contrast to atlanta . It strucken as i was working on my book that atlanta largely moves on, gets over the being burned accepts thats really the thing that put atlanta on the map and columbia sort of clings to it with much more anger. Is it that . I hope that we find some answers here today. Who burned columbia . 150 years later it still depends on who you ask. Thank you [ applause ] thanks very much for those very stimulating thoughts about that problem of deciding who lit the match. Our next speaker is a wonderful historian who comes to us from massachusetts by way of colorado texas, california, the southwest. Meghan kate now is a writer, historian, cultural critic based in lincoln massachusetts. Shes written for the union times, this union blog for jay stewart daley, for the chronicle, post, american of higher education, and for the civil war times. She earned her b. A. In history and literature from harvard university. Her ph. D. In american studies from the university of iowa and has taught at Texas Tech University cal statefullerton, harvard and brown. Shes written two books, the one that i think youre really going to find fascinating if youre into the civil war is ruined nation destruction and the American Civil War published in 2012. Her other book published in 2005, shes working on a third the path of the dead man how the west was won and lost during the American Civil War. Im looking forward to that. And shes also the author of a very interesting entertaining slight israeli saucy blog called historica, which i have found amuse. She describes it as a blog that examines the weird ways that people engage with history in everyday life. Please welcome meghan kate nelson. [ applause ] perfect. Excellent. I would like to echo and thanks to jessica and don and tom for bringing us all here today and to my co projectists and thank you to all of you for coming out on this cold and dreary day to listen to us talk and to talk yourselves about destruction during the American Civil War, which is one of my favorite topics. It was a Beautiful Day in late may, 1865, when Albert Gallatin brown, a u. S. Treasury agent in the department of south, stood on the west bank of the river and looked up at columbia. The city he wrote to his family, presents a fine appearance, finer to me from the effects of shermans bombardment and torch. We could see hundreds of chimneys against the sky walls without roofs. Oh, it was a glorious sight. I luck sure crate, i delight i enjoy the sight of all of this havoc and ruin. Now, this response to the ruins of columbia from a Union Official probably does not surprise you. Clearly, browns elation was rooted in the symbolism of the ruined city for a northerner. To him, the destruction represented the death of the confederate cause in its cradle and the end of four years of bloodshed. But browns wording here, his description of columbias ruins is chimneys against the sky and walls without roofs suggests that he enjoyed viewing the destruction not only as proof of a Union Victory, but also as an aesthetic experience. Now, what may in fact surprise you is that there were some columbia residents who felt the same way who saw the ruined city as a place of sublime and melancholy beauty that they responded in this fashion illuminating the complicated ways that civil war americans understood the war and its violence. Take mary wilton. She had come to columbia in the summer of 1863 with her two sons and her mother and her grandmother after the union bombardment of charleston. She was living with her family a few blocks from main street in february 1865 when it became inevitable that they had they abandoned their house she gathered her two boys and stuffed as many Household Items as she could into their clothes. As they fled from their home the entire family stopped to watch a mansion burn to the ground. One of the grandest scenes of this mammoth conflagration was the burning of mr. Clarksons house, she wrote. The building was surrounded by an afternooned collin ad consisting of 39 columns extending from the roof to the ground. These were of massive brick work and stood while the dwelling was burned. The fire, as seen through the arches was grand beyond description. It was barely an illuminated picture such as seldom seen in real life. So despite her fear in that moment and the fact that she was a victim of these violent acts wilden reacted to the destruction of the clarkson house aestheticcally. She stopped in the street to watch this house burn. The scene was captivating to her because of its visual contrast between the red flames leaping and the black smoke broiling and the immobile solidity of those tall white columns. Part of wildens pleasure in the scene was also due to its novelty. It was an illuminated picture seldom seen in real life. That she would see the burning clarkson house as an illuminated picture is really fascinating and it reflects the fact that during the antebellum period american painters had embraced the ruin as a subject, producing canvass that depicted real and imagined shards of wall, of broken columns, and empty windows, like this painting by thomas cole, one of the most famous of the hudson river pale painters entitled the course empire desolation. This is the last canvas from a fivepainting group that cole finished in 1836. Its all an imagine scene but sort of depicts the rise and fall of this imagined empire. And this is its end with its single column and its ruins being overtaken by nature. Engravers reproduced images like this and others for insertions in books or for sale as single sheets. They were cheap enough so that even working class americans could buy images of ruins to decorate their homes. By 1861, urban ruins were accepted elements of the conventional landscape scene and americans really enjoyed contemplating the many ideas that their rubble embodied. The fall of empires, the triumph of nature over culture the romanticism of failure. They also had the language to describe both ruins and the ideas they evoked. Middle class americans were familiar with the terms sublime which was used to kind of connote a vastness or grandeur and the term picturesque, which suggested more pleasing contrast s of forms. Most of the time they used the term grand, like wilden did in her description to convey both of these elements at the same time both the sublime and the picturesque. In the 1860s then, americans applied this language of the sublime and picturesque and the grand to civil war ruins. And northern and southern artists began to produce illustrations, litgraphs, engravings paintings, and especially photographs depicting war time acts of destruction including cities on fire and the ruins that resulted. You have probably seen union photographer george bernards photographs of columbias ruins before, and i believe this is the image thats reprinted outside on one of the banners for this conference. This is a view of main street taken from the steps of the capitol in the days after the fire which is included in george bernards album of images from shermans campaigns in georgia and South Carolina. Hes a northern photographer. This is an interesting not all of the reproductions of this image look exactly like this. Bar nerd was one of our first prolific photoshoppers. So what you might notice that is unusual about this image is it has clouds in it. In early photography actually, the city because he was focusing on the city and the ruins, the sky actually looks sort of matte gray, because of the exposure. So what he did is that he then took pictures of clouds in which he could capture those and then he spliced these two together. Photoshoping. But it was a southern photographer, a columbia Resident Named richard wern who took the most comprehensive set of images of the citys ruins in the days and months after the fire. This is his photograph of main street from almost the exact same spot from rich bernard took his photo. A closer to the fence a little further to the left, but this is an interesting component also of civil war photography and visual production is that there became sort of sights where people would take images. So we see a lot of these images produced over and over again from different artists because these were sort of the pictures you had to take, the iconic places. Again, because there was something about them that was aestheticcally pleasing. The reason that main street is aestheticcally pleasing here is you get the longview. You can see the main street extending into the distance, not unlike a river and a landscape image with the ruins next to it and you can really see the profile of those chimneys and the sky that brown loved to look at so much. So wern emigrated to the u. S. From the isle of man during the 18 40s moved to columbia in 1859. Here he opened a photography studio taking portraits and outdoor scenes. He took at least 19 photographs that we know of of columbias ruins after the fire of february 17, and the South Carolina library owns the originals of all these and all of the images that im showing you are taken from their digital collection that they have online. So you can look at these and kind of school through them and really blow them up and look at their details. He sold these images as images printed on small cards that measured about 2 1 2 inches by 4 inches. Like the size of a business card, a little larger that we have today. You can actually see these images that im going to show you, you can see its nature as a card. You see the edges of it and the way the paper is sort of torn and its been used and handled with the frame around it. This technique was introduced in the United States in 1859 so right before the civil war began and they quickly became a popular and cheap form of photographic reproduction during the war, that he chose to sell images of columbias ruins in this form suggests that both he and his buyers saw them in a number of ways. As documentary images, here are the ruins that you need to see. So not unlike the list of ruins that William Gilmore sims creates in the text that again is for sale outside. Also as aesthetic objects as views that are enjoyable to look at and also as war souvenirs. So this is werns photograph of the clarkson house. As you can see he took this image from across the street and at a slight angle so that the viewer can take in the many columns that had so impressed wilden on the night of the fire. This is an interesting choice. I think he was trying to include the entire structure in the image, which necessitated backing up a significant distance, and the fact that hes taken it from an angle a lot of times we talk about photographs as being depictions of the truth of reality. But as you all know, whenever we take a picture, we frame the shot right . You move it into position, whats the thing that looks good . Its the angle. That is the artist in you coming out to engage with the scene aestheticcally. So this is what wern was doing. What this means is that the columns in this image are almost obscured by these trees that have leafed out in the spring of 1865. This is an interesting choice that he makes here. Again, i think its because he wanted to include the entire building but that he includes the trees creates another kind of contrast between nature and the ruins that evokes a sense of recovery in the midst of destruction that we will rise from the ashes right that this is the south has a natural resilience. In may 1865 teenager emla will he could not went for a nighttime walk moaning the ruins with friends and family members. Lacontes father was a scientist on the faculty at columbia college, later the university of South Carolina and she wrote an eloquent and impassioned diary of her wartime experience that many historians including myself and ann have used in their studies of the civil war and of columbia in wartime. Laconte watched the fire start and spread from her house on campus. My god, what a scene, she wrote in her diary the next day. Imagine night turned to noonday, a copper colored sky across which swept columns of black rolling smoke, glittering with sparks and flying embers while all around us were falling thickly showers of burning flake s. Such great language. You can see why we love her as a historical source right . On the take after the fire, laconte was in shock. By mid may she was derespondent. She had not written in her journal for two weeks after hearing of the surrender of lees and johnstons troops. The fall of the confederacy so crushed us, she wrote that it seemed to me i did not care what became of me. The evening of may 16 was a lovely moonlight night. Azole cant and her group set out to walk in the burnt district, the city appeared to her, very beautiful and melancholy. They did not talk much as they picked their way across the rubble. As far as the eye could reach, she wrote the next day, there were only specterlike chimneys and the shattered walls, all flooded over by the rich moonlight which gave them a mysterious but mellow softness. As laconte wandered on to bland street, the scene became more beautiful because in her estimation, the handsome residences makes the most picturesque ruins. Clarksons house with its white columns diplomaing in the moonlight, looked like an old greek ruin. In the wake of the war, laconte was able to enjoy this interplay of the moonlight and the ruins associating them not with rage anymore, but with melancholy a kind of exquisite sadness. She was transported through time imagining the clarkson house to be an old greek ruin such a substitution was a satisfactory turn for southerners, right . It transformed the southern landscape of destruction into an aesthetic of the ages. She and her friends walked on to look at christ church. It was a very pretty little church, she noted, and makes a lovely ruin. We stood gazing on it in silence for many minutes. They walked up the stone steps and looked inside at the mounds of rubble, talking in low voices. Church ruins were especially evocative, not only of the past referencing the great english ruins, but also the violence of urban warfare which destroyed churches as well as warehouse and arsenals, keeping and producing war material. Sometimes on these structures were destroyed by accident and sometimes on purpose. Werns photograph of christs Episcopal Church brings nature and culture together. The tree trunks echo the soaring, empty, gothic windows of the church, which interestingly themselves were meant to mimic the shape of trees architecturally. This is part of the gothic style is that they deliberately referenced kind of the soaring trees and treetops. They emma size the buildings emptiness. Lacontes group wandered down main street trying to imagine it, she wrote, as it once was. They ended up, they sort of came at it from the opposite direction of werns other photo photos. They ended up standing in front of the statehouse which did not have its portico and did not have its dome at this point but it shown white before us looking itself like a grand ruin. Now, this, as you all probably know was the new State Capitol under construction when shermans troops entered the city. It did indeed look like a ruin. But what it was, in fact, was what cultural historian has called a ruin in reverse. A building in the midst of going up rather than coming down. Laconte and her friends wanted to climb up to the roof to take in the view of the city, to sort of replicate in part both images of main street. But as she wrote bitterly the yankees had burned out the temporary floors and stair steps, leaving only the walls like a shell. Werns view of main street look north towards state house, positions the State Capitol at the end of a diagonal boulevard of ruins which laconte and her friends would have gone down from the left foreground of this image all wait to the sort of right middle ground. This is one of several images that wern took. Main street was the Business District as it is now and it was the neighborhood, most thoroughly destroyed by the fire. In werns photographs the street itself dominates the foreground and the angle of vision here which again is on another kind of pivot reveals the extent of the destruction of columbias businesses. Street views, like this were quite popular in ruin photography and invite viewers to do as laconte did which is to try and imagine the place as it once was. Reassembling the rubble in their minds, these viewers of these ruins engaged their imaginations putting the present and past together in one place. Emma lacontes richard wern and mary wildens responses to columbias ruins suggested tremendous symbolic flexibility of ruins during the American Civil War. They offered the citys residents the opportunity to express deep emotions and to muse upon larger questions. They represented the past, but also the future and they provoked fury and hatred, but also sadness sympathy and generosity. Columbias ruins, then revealed that warfare is a process of transformation turning destroyed cities into scenes of grand and terrible beauty. Thank you very much. [ applause ] thank you meghan. Our next speaker is kaitlyn verboon from Yale University where she is now finishing a dissertation. Shell take us beyond the fire of february 1865 to the reinstruction era. She is originally from chappell hill, North Carolina. She went to school at william and mary. She has a Long Association with columbia however. She was the Historic Columbia foundations 2012 scholar in residence with Woodrow Wilson family home that just now is a museum interpreting reconstruction in this area. Her dissertation and her first book in progress grapples with how the races lived together and apart after emancipation, when blacks could control where they moved and lived, but before the era of jim crow and formal segregation. Columbia she tells us provided an ideal site to examine these questions because the fire of 1865 damaged so much of the livable space in the city so that questions about space and access and rights were put into sharp relief. Shes received Research Fellowships and most recently spent six months in washington, d. C. As the german historical institutes fellow in africanamerican historic. Please welcome kaitlyn verboon. [ applause ] good morning. I want to echo everyone and thank you all for being here and my co panelists and everybody who came together to make this event possible. Im really excited and honored to be part of this reappraisal of the burning of columbia and the fire sits right at the juncture between war and peace, between the civil war and reconstruction and as we all know, the impact of war didnt end with Confederate Military surrender. So im actually hoping that our discussion here today will be one of the first of many events commemorateing reconstruction just like weve had so many events commemorating the sesquicentennial of the civil war. So in march of 1865, almost a month after columbia is burned a new newspaper was cobbled together. They named it the columbia phoenix. It was a newspaper that rose from the literal ashes of columbia and selby and sims chose that name deliberately. They wrote, like the phoenix our city shall spring from her ashes and our phoenix shall announce her glorious rising. So after blaming the destruction of the city on the union troops who sims called the cruel and malignant enemy the editor laid out the mission of the newspaper. He wrote, it is for us a fully as possible to make the melancholy record of our wretchedness so our sons may always remember and the whole christian world everywhere may read. So while official blame for the conflagration may have been debated, white colombians like sometimes, harbored no doubt about who burned it. And perhaps more importantly for us he understood that in popular imagination, this fire was likely to become columbias sort of defining moment with the civil war. The columbia phoenix from day one wanted to control that narrative. So today i want to do three things. First i want to look at some of the ways that columbias residents dealt with the practicalities of fire. Im studying the political and cultural scene for the spring of april 1865. And next i want to consider the legacies of this destruction on how reconstruction developed in columbia. How did the political and cultural environment translate into actual changes in the city . The fire has been called the seminal event in columbias history by people like sims, as well as people in the last 150 years, even today. But what i want to suggest today is that the effects of the fire on how Colombian Society develop ed during the years of reconstruction was neither as direct nor as profound as that statement might suggest. Finally ill conclude by offering some thoughts on whether this widespread destruction truly altered conceptions of space and race in columbia. So a third to a half of the city was destroyed. And while columbias largest residential areas were mostly spared and the central Business District was really targeted the fire did destroy many private homes. So what did colombians do . Some fled the city, either voluntarily or at the request of city officials. Some moved in with friends and family. Some rented homes that hadnt burned or even rooms that hadnt been destroyed. Some had to camp out outside in public parks and others even took refuge in the buildings of the in university of South Carolina. But even more pressing was the fact that the fire destroyed so many of the provisions of the city. So starvation and suffering seemed to daily stalk colombians. Sherman left 500 cattle grazing in the city, but the mayor complained that the cattle were so skinny that they were just dying on their hands rather than feeding anyone. Other colombians complained, one wrote, there is little food to be had and we have all things in common, drawing rations from the free market and living on the charity of those who have more than we. A columbia woman writing to her daughter in charlotte concurred, saying, what we are to do for provisions, i do not know. And nothing doing to make any money and no prospect of anything. I wish you would send the potatoes by mrs. Palmer, for i cannot get one to plant. Not one seed in the ground yet. The lack of transportation and the destruction of the countryside around columbia made the situation even worse. So columbia not only has to feed their own residents but there are people flocking from the countryside to seek relief there as well. So city officials cobbled together a network of ad hoc committees run by the city, run by private organizations run by benevolent associations. They took up collections in cities that hadnt been destroyed by fire like augusta. But even these they provided basic necessities either free or at a minimal cost. But they soon found themselves completely overwhelmed by just the sheer scale of necessary relief. So in may which is about four months after the fire, the city council decided to petition the federal government for assistance and the arrival of agents of the freedmans bureau, the organization, federal organization designed to help in the transition from slavery to freedom, they arrived in the city. So it seemed reasonable that some relief could be had at the hands of the federal government. So the freedmans distributed aid to black and white colombians in the city and actually reported that in 1867, demands for relief went up. So to most white colombians, this fact that theyve been forced out of their homes theyre relying on outside organizations for food and basic please, the city looks like this jumbled mess of disorder and chaos and this disorder really destabilizes the line between independence and dependentence. White accounts of the aftermath are filled with concerns about columbias exhausted stores but also their own growing dependency. Now i also turned to emma laconte and she wrote in her diary in 1865, as long as we can keep body and soul together father would not borrow from anybody, but to be under obligations to a yankee . The yankees are issuing rations, but theyre only drawn by people in actual need or who have no selfrespect. Her notes mirrored the thoughts of many colombians who faced dependence on others and feared the changes this growing dependency might bring would in their city and larger southern society. And the reason that this seems to threaten the actual basis of society is that antebellum society was really organized around the unit of the household. And a household was defined as the male household head and then all of his dependents. Those would be his slaves his children, his sisters his wife. And a southern man was not really fully independent or a full citizen until he had dependents who finished on him. Then this private dependence gave him private authority within his household and that translated into public power. The civil war and emancipation disrupted Southern Households in the ways thats talking about especially in columbia because it forced people out of their private homes and into these new public spaces. So what this means is that the entire power structure in columbia is really in flux in the weeks, months following the fire. Food and housing shortages is not just a white concern. It affects black residents as well, but where white residents saw kay cross and disorder, black residents saw freedom and opportunity. I want to look at one particular instance where africanamericans in columbia used the conditions that were brought by fire, war and emancipation to define citizenship in a meaningful way. In 1867, William Beverly nash, a prominent black colombian who would go on to hold many important positions he petitioned the municipal government to admit two black residents to the citys alms house. Given the shortage of space and resources in 1867, people are still drawing their rations from the freedman has bureau. Nash understood that the importance of black access to this physical space and he took on the City Government in order to secure that access. So at first the City Government officials just ignored nash and his petition. But when the Freedman Bureau gets involved, the mayor, who is now theodore stark he rejects nashs petition in no Uncertain Terms and writes why in the hell should he allow them entrance . He considered africanamericans to be the pet lamb of the government and maintained the city bore no spot for them. Even though plaque and white citizens received aid from the freedmans bureau, stark ignores the fact that white residents are also benefitting from the federal governments presence. So nash and the Freedmens Bureau says well youre barring these two men solely because they are africanamerican. Stark does not deny that allegation. Instead, he offered a financial reason to justify his discrimination. Access to institutions like the alms house he argued was not an automatic right for anyone, regardless of skin color. Instead, admittance was reserved for taxpayers because it was their dollars who supported institutions like the alms house. So he turns this governmental public space thats supposed to be for the benefit of all of the citizens into a new kind of private space in which we had to pay a membership fee taxes, in order to access. And stark actually claims that because only 118 black colombians paid taxes, that no black colombians are allowed entrance. So the Freedmens Bureau and nash and other leading members of the black community, they dont fall for this argument. They pointed out that black people were taxed the same as white people. And 118 black colombians had actually paid taxes. Additionally, there are plenty of white colombians who were defaulting this their tax payments, if you look at any of the newspapers, there is full of all of these auctions of property because they havent the taxes havent been paid. But stark does not use them o deny anybody access to the alms house. Some black colombians were more explicit and announced that if they werent going to be allowed into access these government spaces, that they would stop paying any taxes at all. So starks argument really backfired on him. The fact that any black colombians paid taxes at all in the view of the Freedmens Bureau and black colombians made them eligible for all Government Services and spaces. So this is not to say that black colombians valued independence any less than white colombians. Black colombians struggled against persistent accusations that they were idle vagrant the. But if dependence remained distasteful, demanding Government Services and access to this government al public space became an important way africanamericans claimed citizenship after the civil war. Only a sids could demand service from the government and in the devastated urban environment of columbia, these demands could be the difference between life and death. So while starks refusal was cloaked in these financial concerns, it actually amounted to repudiation of black peoples claim to citizenship. Taking place against the backdrop of the urban ruins that you saw so many images of, these conditions seemed directly brought about by the fire because colombians could measure the destabilization of their society in the number of people who were displaced in the number of people who were going hungry, the number of people who were standing in line to receive their free rations. Its hard to overestimate the effect of the burning of columbia on the minds of white colombians and the sort of general environment of white columbia. It was devastating and memorable experience for everyone involved. There is so many accounts of this night of terror. Colombians published accounts of it. They write about it in their letters and diaries. They talk about it on the street corners. And so the cultural importance is really undeniable. But cities across the south faced the same sort of destabilization of power structures. Even in cities that were not touched by fire. The destabilization manifested itself throughout the south in different ways. So in North Carolina, former members of elite society found that after the civil war, they could no longer use the Capitol Building for their own meetings. Black people everywhere redefined relationships between the government and the governed and began to demand access to government spaces like the columbia alms house all overt south. So for example, in North Carolina raleigh africanamericans claimed their rights to be admitted to the state lunatic asylum. What i want to suggest is that, in fact, colombians experiences resemble other cities more than they diverge during reconstruction. Its just that the stakes seemed much higher in columbia. So what i want to suggest today is that instead of looking at the burning of columbia as this in and of itself revolutionary event, we should really look at it as a force that magnified and accelerated changes that were occurring all over the south. While faith, race and citizenship intertwined in emancipation across the region the fire in columbia made this connection particularly visceral. Black political, legal, and even social rights became entangled with this loss of white spatial control and the loss of physical spaces in the city. So the fire set this political and structural context which connected public space black citizenship and resource competition and brought the larger issues of reconstruction. So freedom Citizenship Rights into sharper relief around a single disaster. What it really does and really lasting importance, i think, is that it made freedom look like the zerosum game in which any rights gained by black colombians were ones directly lost by white colombians. Thank you very much. [ applause ] thank you very much for those comments. Our fourth and last speaker is my colleague tom brawn, with the History Department at the university of South Carolina where tom teaches courses on the civil war and reconstruction. Tom is educated at harvard, three times over. He has a bachelors degree, law degree and ph. D. From harvard. He has written extensively on the civil war period. Recently an edited book called remixing the civil war medications on the sesquicentennial. And another on the public art of civil war commemoration. But his latest book is the one that you want to get ahold of and is just now coming to market. It will be for sale after the event today out here in the lobby. That is civil war cannon sites of confederate memory in South Carolina. He has also been a Principal Consultant for Historic Columbia on the historic Woodrow Wilson house. This is a very rare interpretation of this troubled period in the history of the south and the history of the nation reconstruction. Today tom is going to talk about the reconstruction of the south and columbia. Please welcome tom brown. [ applause ] thank you very much don for that generous introduction and advertisement. I would also like to thank jessica and tom for all the work theyve done on this event. Robin waits everyone at Historic Columbia for all theyve done over the past months in the sesquicentennial observance. Today, february 17 is perhaps the most memorable day in the history of columbia. February 17, 1865. And the memories have become a starting point for a wide variety of cultural productions beginning with reminiscences and photographs that meghan showed us, through writings by people who lived through it, like henry timrod and mary chestnut and continuing through the events of the past month. I would be glad to talk about those memories in the question and answer period. But i want to focus on at this point is that there is lots of ways to be memorable and memorable does not always mean pivotal. And looked at from a lot of vantage points, its hard to see that the burning of columbia had a particularly large impact on its history. To be specific what i want to focus on is the idea that the burning of columbia was not particularly a big factor in the failure of reconstruction in columbia. To the contrary, reconstruction in columbia went a lot better than it went elsewhere in South Carolina. That is not to say that the burning of columbia isnt part of a set of feelings of hostility that were very real. There is a lot of emotional history of the civil war in reconstruction era. Slavery built on profound racial antipathy and deepened that antipathy. Secession inflamed passion, the war deepened bitterness. The fire offered residents of columbia a focus for this, a way to id identify it with a single moment. No talk on this subject is complete without a quotation from emma laconte. So i will offer my ante. Emma laconte writes shortly after the fire before they came here, i thought i hated them as much as was possible. Now i know there are no limits to the feelings of hatred. Its easy to jump from a quotation like that to imagine a little history of reconstruction and resistance to reconstruction. You can make that history quite identifiable in particular people. Robert k. Scott, for example, commanded a brigade in shermans 17th corp. He became the state assistant commissioner of the Freedmens Bureau in South Carolina after the war. From that position he was elected governor in 1868 and served in that position until 1872. As you heard the heard, the figure at the end headed the, wade hampton, whose family had a number of houses burned on this day 150 years ago. He, of course, winds up leading the resistance to reconstruction as the redeemer governor. But tidy as that story is, my major point is that the resistance to buy racial democracy in columbia was very different really from the violent resistance elsewhere in South Carolina in the upcountry of South Carolina. So, for example, when violence in 1871 prompted governor grant to order the United States army to break up the Ku Klux Klans in upcountry South Carolina, the arrests are almost in york and spartanburg counties. The trials were held in columbia which underscored the contrast between the relatively peaceful capitol, the completely peaceful capitol and blood soaked resistance elsewhere in the state. A good demonstration of this contrast and our landscape is the Randolph Cemetery, also a product of the violence of 187071, which prompted local africanamerican leaders to look back over the political terrorism of the last couple years, make a Lasting Imprint on the columbia landscape. They turned back to the assassination of Benjamin Franklin randolph in 1868, shortly after a speech. He was assassinateed. Randolph represented yorkburg in the legislature. He was buried in columbia after a funeral at bethel church. A couple years after his death, after the violence of 1870 am71, in the midst of the continuing violence of 1871, republicans planned a monument to randolph. There is a cornerstone dedication ceremony at what was then still part of Elmwood Cemetery in february of 1871, which is a major demonstration of interracial politics in columbia featured a parade with militia, highly controversial black militia including a unit named after randolph a variety of political dignitaries black and white. Four months later Elmwood Cemetery sold the land to Randolph Cemetery to make Randolph Cemetery which is a good kind of landscape example of the ways in which reconstruction created lasting black institutions. So randolph is a reminder that columbia was not as violent as other places, that political leaders stayed in columbia because it was safer here than elsewhere. But i wanted to argue a little bit more positively than that that columbia, not just that columbia was a safe haven but there was a real moment of opportunity here and i want to do that by giving you two vignettes from the burning of columbia. The first begins with william will he librant enlisted early in the war. Like many, it was formed mostly of people who live near each other. This regiment was formed from people who lived in central ohio near the town of newark. Colonel who organized the regiment was a west pointer from newark. His name was charles r. Woods. He was a musician and he headed the regimental band. Eventually the army made them brigade units rather than regimental units. He becomes the leader of a brigade level band. In that role he finds himself in columbia on february 17, 1865 as part of shermans 17 corp. He would have been stationed across the river during the occupation of columbia, although he certainly may have wandered in as a number of people in the 17 corp. Did. His old unit, his old neighbors his friends the 76th ohio, was in the heart of the action. They were in William Woods brigade and his brother, charles r. Woods First Division of logans 15 corp. This is the brigade that is sent in to the city as the fire begins to get serious in the evening and is here from 8 00 oclock in the evening until 2 or 3 in the morning. If librant wasnt personally there, he knew many many people who were. After the war, he went back home to ohio but in 1867 he decided to reenlist in the army. He was assigned to a unit stationed in columbia where the army had become basically a goodwill delegation after the transfer of power from the military units that served overseas, the adoption of a new state constitution, election of State Government under that constitution after the military transfers power to civilian government. He started up a band in columbia. He started up a series of afternoon band concerts that were tremendously popular. They have concerts three times a week, sometimes five times a week. It was a fixture of social life in columbia. At the end of his term, he decided to stay in columbia. He opened a music store and was a central figure in the life of columbia. He handled bookings and ticket sales for one of the major musical venues in town. He became the band leader for the firemens band, which was a natural continuation of his work at the post. It was his work as the leader of the firemens band that brought him to the state fair on november 9, 1871. This was the third state fair since the end of the war. The state fair was an institution that develops beginning in 1869 quite explicitly as a vehicle for organizing resistance to reconstruction, for bringing together whites around the state in thinking about resistance to reconstruction. The key figure in developing the state fair is d. Wyatt aiken who was the secretary of the state fair generally thought to have ordered randolphs murder. He had threatened it and was arrested for it, but was not tried. The sinister backdrop to the state fair only highlights how notable it was that librant was there with his firemens band of all things, this veteran of shermans march, for a wellattended competition to identify the best band in the state. In the finals his band plays a couple of pieces and then there are a couple of pieces from thompsons band. Thompsons band was a black group, a group that played at the marches of the randolph rifles processions of the black vigilant fire company, at the republican state convention. The leader i think the leader of thompsons band was one of the judges in this competition is William Henry orchard. Popular local musician, longtime teacher at Columbia Female College now columbia college, orchards house was burned in 1865. Orchard was wellknown in the community. Got a loft Community Credit for saving the building of Columbia Female College. There were two other judges, one was a union veteran, one a confederate veteran. They gave the 300 prize to librants band. But the phoenix recognized that it said all unite in a limit carry notice of torchsons band. Not to put too much weight on it this interracial competition in this environment suggests the kind of promise of reconstruction, a wedge of reconstruction. One more story of this kind. As we heard the heart of the Fire District was main street, which was very heavily burned one and had to be very heavily rebuilt. Of the many buildings that go up on main street in the decade after the fire, the most important was what is now our city hall. The Federal Post Office and courthouse, authorized by congress in 1869. No building symbolized reconstruction more dramatically than the federal courthouse and post office. The federal courthouse serves a judiciary that had been dramatically empowered during reconstruction to safeguard civil rights. Before the civil war, the courts were a neutral playing ground in lawsuits between residents of different states. After the war, a variety of legislation, Civil Rights Act of 1866 enforcement acts of 1870 and 71 jurisdiction and removal act of 1875, the creation of the department of justice in 1870, all these things make for a new kind of litigation that is going to center on cases that will define and protect american citizenship. We think of the center of citizenship today. The post office similarly symbolized reconstruction the patronage that was essential to building up a political party, the basic ensurement of grassroots politicalization. Shortly after the president s inauguration in 1869 grant named exslave charles m. Wilder the postmaster for columbia, up with of the first africanamerican postmasters in the country. And a symbol that the Republican Coalition was going to recognize its africanamerican voting base with patronage. Wilder was an enterprising businessman, as well as a republican activist, very much like w. B. Nash whom kaitlyn mentioned. And wilder personified this black Leadership Circle that turned to commerce to bridge partisan and racial divisions. Hes a founder of Randolph Cemetery and hes buried there now. Apart from its eventual uses as the post office and the courthouse, just the process of building what is now city hall had implications for reconstruction. Its a nice building. It was an expensive building. And building it created lots of patronage. The disburse am of the money to build it was administered by columbia native who was a republican, white republican the merchant cyrus h. Baldwin. Much of the money he was disbursing was a threestory granite building. A lot of money was going to skilled artisans to stone cutters, and these stone cutters personified the idea of the dignity of labor that was the foundation for republican antislavery ideology. This belief that labor is dignified and slavery is antithetcal to that. The construction of the post office and courthouse propelled columbia to the cutting edge of postwar labor politics. The controversy over the eighthour day. In the aftermath of emancipation, workers demand for time to maintain family relations, time to pursue selfcultivation, time for leisure, eight hours for what we will was the slogan. That was the foremost postemancipation on the dignity of labor. Congress established an eight hour day. But the Johnson Administration just let federal contractors cut wages by 20 when they went from a ten hour day to eight hour day. The Grant Administration came in and said dont do that. But they didnt do it with much force. Because conservatives protested that regulating working hours interfered with freedom of contract. The stone cutters at the Columbia Post Office and courthouse went on strike for an eight hour day in april of 1872. They obtained the support of president grant. A month later, grant issued his proclamation with more teeth in it. The building of city hall, the post office and courthouse goes on. The project comes to a rather touching and inspiring conclusion on july 3 1875. When the crew voluntarily stayed overtime to raise the eagle tipped flag staff from which the United States flag began to fly on Independence Day over the former cradle of secession. After finishing the installation, the group assembled in the spacious main room of the post office to conduct a mock trial in which they sentenced the master mechanic in charge of the site charles e. Kirk, to where for the rest of miss life a massive and elegant gold watch inscribed with the appreciation of his fellow workers. Charles e. Kirk was a columbia native, a form confederate officer. Hes a lieutenant throughout the war. He was an admirer of Benjamin Frank will he parry, the greenville unionist who serves as the first postwar governor. Kirks participation in this event, like the friendly band competition in the state fair in november 1871, suggests the local potential in reconstruction. Anne rubin makes a point that white southern memories of shermans march tend to do run together with the memories of reconstruction. This con inflation of shermans march and reconstruction has served the purpose of imagining reconstruction as some sort of destructive process from which white southerners understandably and unanimously recoiled. That is not in fact the case. Reconstruction was a highly constructive process that at least in columbia showed real prospects of succeeding. The annihilation of that promise, which featured locals like wade hampton working with radicals from around the state was an event that columbia celebrated for decades with the kind of effort with which we are marking the burning of columbia now. And at this point in the history of the city, i am pleased to see the community putting so much effort into the period of opening promise rather than the period of shutting down promise. Thank you very much. [ applause ] thank you very much, tom brown. And thanks to all of you for i think four just wonderful papers. These were unscripted. We didnt tell them what to address. We just brought in four of the best historians on this period. But they have also left lots of topics untouched and i am sure will put lots of questions in your minds. We have plenty of time now for our continued q and a period for most of the next hour. I invite you just to raise your hand. Ill call on you. Please introduce yourselves. Tell us to whom you are addressing your question if it is a particular panelist, and state your question loud and clear. Ill repeat it if its not audible to everyone. The speakers all we have one microphone there that we can pass around. Anyone with a question in mind that would like to address the panelists . Yes, we have a mobile microphone in the audience. Fascinating talks. I want to go back to that issue you brought up a week or so ago, tom, about the difference between the burning of atlanta and its memory and the burning of columbia. You brought that up. Maybe kate, you can focus on that and tom, you can talk about. But what is the difference between these two . Why is it so much columbia focusing on this . Is it because of hampton being insulted by sherman or is it something more ingrained that makes the two different . Well, just to repeat, quickly, i think there is a variety of factors that go into it. It is significant that the burning of columbia happens near the very end of the war. And so it is possible author these pictures of the kind that meghan showed to get out. There is just much more proliferation of that kind of imagery than in the case of atlanta. I think that a big part of it is the postwar trajectories of atlanta and columbia. Relatively similar cities during the war. Columbia is four fifths as big as atlanta at the outbreak of the war. After the war, roughly comparable in size. Roughly 20,000 to 30,000 range. After the war they left us in the dust. By 1880, atlantas four times as big as columbia. Atlanta memory is addressing a national audience. It is trying to attract National Investment national tourism. Its selling a message of resurgence. Which is not to say columbia was about stagnation. But it was address ago local audience in that local audience the local politics did not always go very favorably for columbia elites in many cases overwhelmed by agrarian insurgents or organized labor politics. There was much more to be down about and so they cultivated a landscape of ruins, whereas atlanta built up this landscape of monuments. Thats a great question, first of all. I think also the context is very different. The thing about atlanta is it is actually destroyed partially three different times. First in the battle of atlanta in which union forces surround part of the city and start shooting shells into the city center. Then when the confederates abandon atlanta, they do their own defensive burning which was quite common and has been erased in the history of a lot of the civil war that confederates were responsible for a lot of that, because that was considered a completely normal and justify final military tactic. So they did a lot of defensive burning. And then at Union Occupation which you did not see in columbia at all. How long did they stay here . Two days . As opposed to several months in atlanta. And then they deliberately went around the city and use their engineers in atlanta to set explosives at specific sites and then set them off and burn the city down. So there is a the burning of atlanta is actually a about a fourmonth process, as poe he is columbia is so spectacular because it is one day of heavy destruction. Its about the same i think its around the same kind of percentage of the city, each city destroyed in that case. I would just add that what is interesting, though, were sitting in columbia and so were all very focused right now on the burning of columbia. But the broader cultural memory of shermans march in the war is much more focused on the burning of atlanta. Even though its the misperceived and misunderstood and misconstructed burning of atlanta for that, i think you cant ever underestimate the impact of gone with the wind which so shaped the way we look at the war. And of course, that all takes place in georgia. So that is an interesting dichotomy that even though columbia seems to be more resentful and to cling more to its burning it still remains the less wellknown burning. Very good. Other questions . Yes, sir. Back here. Wait for the microphone here and then everyone will be able to hear you. Thanks. This is for miss rubin. I would like to regarding your comments about the blame game for columbia, i would like to share a quote from you. By mark coburn. His book, general sherman at war. He writes and i quote, the massive evidence leads to an obvious judgment. Had there been no cotton, columbia would still have burned, for the numerous fires set by shermans troops, but neither sherman, howard nor any general instigating the fire, they let a multitude of arsonists into town. I would like to hear your thoughts on that quote. Im actually not familiar with that quote. I dont know that columbia would actually have burned. It certainly would not have burned to the same spectacular degree. I think that there is a couple ways to answer this. One is that, yes sherman and his men took as their mission to burn more material government buildings, things like that. Its very possible that those would have burned. One of the big misconceptions actually about shermans march has to do with the degree to which private homes were destroyed. That being said there is a how do i want to say this . What happens is that in the georgia part, most of what is destroyed is outbuildings, gin houses farms, they dont burn a lot of private houses in georgia. In South Carolina, however because the men are angrier and there is a real vengeful attitude toward South Carolina on the part of the men and that sherman in his memoirs writes i decided not to restrain the men from this vengeful attitude because i thought that that would impair their vigor. It is more personal in South Carolina and there is more bushing of private homes. I really have to say that i do think that the burning cotton what happens is the burning cotton starts the fires and then once there is already fires its much easier to let them burn to see other fires set. I would also like to share with you im the author of a book. In my research, i found three interesting quotes from three Union Soldiers who claim general logan told them they could burn columbia. An escaped p. O. W. Wrote when the gun horse the cannon lit, he would climbed the high bank beside the road and watched to see where the ball would strike. If i remember rightly, he was aiming at the state house. And he would wave his hat and call three cheers for South Carolina after each discharge. Another wrote i went down to the bank of the river and fired shots at the house. General logan told us to pitch in and fire all we want to do and draw the fire and they fired one shot, he would burn the city. But they did not fire on us and he said he would burn it anyway. So logan was heard you will be burned tomorrow. Captain pepper wrote he heard a Major General saying the popular sing a popular new ditty. Im not disputing that there were Union Soldiers who set fires. The one thing i would say is that for every quote that you have of someone saying john logan gave an order to fire columbia, you have an equivalent quote of a Union Soldier saying we were never given orders to fire columbia. I think its im not at all disputing that Union Soldiers bear blame for some of this fire. We have another question from this gentleman here. Yes. You are standing up. We will get to the others. We have time. I have a question. Why hampton . Its my understanding from reading toms book and other books that a guy named beauregard was in command of the district of South Carolina and other states and was in command here in columbia until the morning of the fire. Hampton became a Lieutenant General that morning and he was given command of the city by beauregard because beauregard was leaving. His first order was dont set the cotton on fire, which was spread among his men and his reason was it would make the city burn. Then he left. He was gone by 8 30. Why hampton . I am as flummoxed. I think sherman is and what he was trying to do. He was later involved in politics. I think thats right. I think part of the reason that hampton gets blamed is that it becomes this sherman versus hampton feud and that sherman says in 1875 i blamed hampton because i knew it would make people more upset. Honestly, i do think that if it had made more sense to blame beauregard, sherman would have blamed beauregard. But there is a utility in that. And certainly it would have been convenient and a nice circular theme to come back to beauregard because hes the one who fired on fort sumter. That actually if there had been a pr person in charge of this whole thing, they would have gone after beauregard. Its hampton who writes the letter to sherman, right . And accuses when ann is talking about this kind of exchange of blame as a mutual did she almost like a literary dual like a pistol dual where theyre sending these letters back and forth blaming each other and then it all gets escalated because hampton is a politician and everyone keeps bringing it up again and again and again because these two guys are pretty high profile. It all begins with that First Exchange of the accusations in the letters. To my knowledge, i dont think beauregard ever sent a letter to sherman about this particular event. So that is the piece that sort of gets all of the play. Good. We have some other questions. Lets take one from the gentleman standing here and then well take all the others in due time. Partly a question, but more or less a followup on your quotes, encourage folks that want to read further on if the question is the burning of columbia who and why. Captain george pepper and ohio soldiers book is good to read. I wouldnt suggest reading any southern versions at the time because they might consider bias, captain pepper is from ohio. Young william ball was a 19yearold soldier from the 76th ohio. Let me read what he wrote to his folks knife weeks after the burn ing. I sent you a note which i captured. I have got a nice opera glass made of peril and a napkin ring of silver. I captured them when the city was on fire in columbia. But a horrible sight it was to see, et cetera, et cetera. The soldiers were bound to burn the secessionist place and they done it. As the fire was raging, the men were pillaging the stores, breaking them open. They they tell us a whole bunch of things that they got. Mr. Middle middleton got a splendid ladys gold watch and a complete set of silver spoons. , et cetera. A great many of our soldiers burned to death by being drunk in the houses that caught on fire. I saw the corpse of one burned to a crisp after the fire laid his gun and cartridge belt on fire. Also our soldiers always said if they ever entered the place they would burn it and they did. It was a vengeance thing the source of secession, and 150 years later, but if the question is testimony like this answers the question. Yes. No question there was a lot of vengeance. There is a hand up back here. Thank you. I wanted to ask a question, primarily directed at dr. Rubin and dr. Nelson. Id like to hear your thoughts on the connections between ruination, ruins, relics, and national identity. And the creation of nationalism in particularly this century. Thank you. We have a half hour. Thats actually a nice followup to that quote because the looting of houses and the taking of these souvenirs was very common throughout in all theaters of the war. Sort of taking these objects and sending them home and all soldiers did it. Northern and southern soldiers did this. And by doing it, they transformed what is kind of domestic object and someones belongings and often something that was very emotionally tied to their lives and they turned it into a kind of relic, into a sort of fetishized piece of the past and saying, this is from the ruins of columbia. So the more powerful the ruins of columbia becomes in the american imagination, the more powerful the object taken from that place. It attains all that. Those objects come to embody the destruction itself. They are part of the ruin. And they get disbursed across the nation. cause the fire has already done the work of destroying things and making as kaitlyn was talking about in her paper, making private spaces public. We see in a lot of disasters. Suddenly youre seeing into poems homes. Walls are torn off and suddenly you can see in peoples living rooms and it seems wrong. But it creates this entry for people to go in and take items. They gain this real power. And depending on when takes it, it can symbolize all sorts of things including Union Victory or confederate defeat which is your connection to nationalism there. I am sure if this answer has completely touched every single subject that every single huge subject that you asked about. But the souvenir taking and the looting were an important part of this process not only for shermans march, but just in the war in general. Wherever soldiers went, they knew that this was an important and vital part of their Life Experience and they wanted to commemorate it themselves and they often did so by taking things from other people. I would say also in terms of the nationalism, a lot of what i argue in my first book is that this nationalism this confederate nationalism that emerges during the war transforms during the postwar years into what i call a sentimental nationalism or emotional nationalism and there is a power in these relics in a sense of victimization on the part of white southerners that becomes a way to hold themselves apart from the nation i think woodward wrote in the 1960s in irony in southern history that the south was the only american region that had the experience of loss and that that becomes such a key element to southern nationalism or southern regionalism, lets say after the war, this newfound southern identity. The last piece of this i would say in terms of the taking of relics is that a staple of reunion and reconciliationist narratives starting in the 188s and is the return of relics. So youre returning something. Flags get returned, personal objects get returned. There is all kinds of stories of i took an object off of a dead confederate and 20 years later, i came back and found his family and sort of made them whole by returning this object. I should mention that tom brown had to leave. He is teaching his students at this moment and so he had to leave. Hes not escaping any questions here. Lets see if we have some others. Youve had your hand up here. That gentleman. This is directed to the what was the condition of the civilian population in columbia prior to the fire . Was it swollen with refugees . Was there any shortage of food . Was it widespread if there was suffering or limited . This is another reason that i think the fire sort of becomes this magnifying force rather than the revolutionary in terms of societal organization. Somebody actually writes and estimates that the population of columbia doubled in january and february of 1865 alone which i think is probably a little bit of an exaggeration, but sort of speaks to this larger issue and there so there is already a shortage of housing and probably food. Also charleston is sending their families, their furniture their valuable alcohol to columbia. They dont start evacuating that until like a day and a half before sherman arrives. So there is already this sort of heightened condition in columbia i understand many slaves were brought here refugeed, because they assumed that it would be the low country charleston, that would be the main target of the union march the invasion. And sherman deceived them in that sense and went not for augusta, not for charleston, but for columbia. Here we have a question. This is for dr. Rubin. I want to offer a very traditional oldfashioned military kind of explanation for why sherman would say, i order atlanta burned, so why wouldnt i admit to burning columbia . This is a disciplined fighting force that hes had in the field for years. He is very proud of them, undoubtedly. This is the first instance i can see as a military historian where he loses control of elements of his army. Large amounts of his army kind of breakdown drunkenness, the kinds of things that would make any military commander kind of ashamed and they wouldnt want to admit to especially to the public or other people in the military hierarchy. Can you respond to that . Thats really interesting. Thats really interesting. This notion that, yeah, sherman is not fully in control of his army in columbia. I think there is an element to which that is true. I also think there is an element to which sherman is not in control of them because he has chosen to not be in control of them. I think that if sherman wanted his men controlled, he would have. Now, he issues this sort of generic, dont burn, dont loot order. But i think that there is a lot of evidence im trying to think of the word i want to use. Flexibility. There is an ebb and flow in the amount of control sherman has over his men, where he will loosen it and tighten it and order his subordinates to loosen and tighten control. So i do think youre right. I do this this is a particular low point for shermans army. I do think if they are out of control or not out of control, this is probably about as close to out of control as they get. You also do see it, though. He really wants them to put the gloves back on when they go into North Carolina and he sort of issues an order to that effect. And that is not effective as sherman would have wanted it to be. The one thing he did not calculate, either controlling them less or more having some sort of impact on their actions. I dont think he could account for the amount of liquor in column. And able to account for the way large amount of combat veterans. I would say yes. There is a lot of liquor in columbia. I think the one thing sherman couldnt account for and i dont mean to come across as some sort of sherman apologist but in the interest of fairness i think he also couldnt account for the weather in columbia. There is a fierce wind blowing. There are actually factors out of his control. Im fascinated that were still fighting the fight even though what i believe and what most historians previous is in fact everyone burned columbia. I always the war burned columbia. And that to me, the more this is sort of the point of my book is that the war burned columbia and then the interesting question is why . Why too we want to place blame . Why do we not want to admit that everyone is at fault in this war, is what i find sort of interesting. Could i just intervene briefly . Weve talked about an ambiguous source of fire and the combination of nature. Okay. Thats debatable. Pillaging is not. And taking things. Another transgression that we havent really taken up yet was rape. I know that harry stout in his book amoral history of the civil war, focuses on columbia. I wonder if any of you could talk about those instances and what was the extent of it and what do we know about rape in columbia . There was one particularly brutal incident involving an older black woman. I think in general we dont know enough about the use of Sexual Violence during shermans march and during the war in general. The evidence or the kinds of evidence that historians like to use is generally pretty thin and its unusual to have as this case or a wellknown case that comes out of with a white woman being raped which is a case that im come across where multiple people know the story and multiple people talk about the story. Memoirs, they are affected by his Civil War Service and also his service in the west. It is important to know, there was a common earlier about civil war sources being biased. They are all biased. If it is a diary or a military record, they are all written by People Like Us who have prejudices and left things out and depicted events in specific ways often weeks and months , after the fact, and what i think is interesting about these sources in shermans march in particular in georgia and South Carolina is they are moving very quickly, and they are not staying in one place for very long, which does not give soldiers time to write the long diary entries and letters that they are writing in other theaters of the war and other engagements and this shapes the way that we view and understand those conflicts, right . The sources have a different kind of inflection. They are not as sustained as other sources in other fights. Just so everyone keeps that in mind. Historians we all try to keep this in mind all the time. There is not just one soothsayer on one side of this conflict or one true type of source. They are all biased in some sort of way. Anyone else . I see a hand up here. And then we will get to the two of you. I want everyone to have at least one question before we get to the second round. What brings me to that, the letter that he wrote to the governor after the burning of columbia where he asked for men and guns to put out violence. And also the guns that were left, i guess by shermans troops. In the days and weeks directly following the burning, those hints at violence. I wonder if any of you might speak to that. We had another question here. Did you have a question . Just a moment. Ok. Do we have a pretty good idea and a many of shermans troops actually came into the city of columbia . You know, we hear 60,000 troops, but i imagine a lot of them stayed on the left of the river and maybe some work on the other side. Do we know how many came through . How many marched down the streets . [indiscernible] the 15th and 17th . Probably about half. Probably about 30,000. But i will tell you honestly, i have not looked at that. I do not have a good answer for you on that specific topic. Im sure it was not all 60,000 but lets see. There were other hands up also. Yes, sir . This question is for dr. Nelson. Im curious to know in your experience the extent to which newspaper illustrators of the time may have shared in that aesthetic that the photographers had . Im curious. Oh, yes. The advantage that the illustrators had was they could depict action. There is only one photograph that i know of that actually shows a building burning because you cant capture and all you see is it looks sort of foggy. You cant capture motion and photography at this point in time. The Exposure Time was too long. It just ended up fuzzing. So, the illustrators have given us all of the images we had of cities on fire. There is a famous image i believe it was one of the wode brothers, maybe william wode. You see the entire foreground is filled with civilians and all of their stuff. All of their domestic belongings. You can see the process that the city is on fire and the first phase of destruction, which is the emptying out of the houses and making the private space public in that sense. But definitely illustrators, of course, were perceived to be artists, as photographers were. Although these civil war american did see photography as more truthful than the illustrations. And many illustrations we have are based on photographs. There is a spread in harpers after antietam that consists all of these famous images. If you know about photography, you know all of these antietam images that gardner took, brady took on the field, but they added people walking, and they added other elements that could not be captured by the photographs themselves. Its an interesting interplay between the illustrators in the photographers. There are two different groups of people, but they both travel with armies on both sides. Northern and southern. Although there were many more northern artists and photographers than southern. I want to piggyback on that and talk about george barnard, americas first photoshopper. Barnard is with sherman for the georgia portion. He was along on the march, but he does not take any photographs on the march. He does not have time. He does do illustrations along the way. My understanding with the columbia photograph is he came back in 1866 and took those photographs. What he does though, he puts together the photographic record of shermans campaign. Which starts in chattanooga. He does the Atlanta Campaign photographs of the atlantic campaign, photographs through atlanta, the ruins of atlanta, photographs of savannah, and then he adds in from his 1866 trip ruins of columbia and he also puts in ruins from charleston, including he gives us the pinckney mansion that burned. In 1861. So barnard himself is a really powerful shaper of what we think shermans march was all about, but not necessarily was all about. We have a followup comment back here. You are asking about the rape dr. Thomas lowry says 750 Union Soldiers were courtmartialed for the duration of the war for that. Sherman himself says that he only knows two rapes. Simms implies that were probably gang rapes of slaves in columbia. I think that is the account that harry stout referred to in columbia. Caitlin, i believe my question is for you. I am somewhat of a civil war buff. My name is annette cummings. Before i retired, i worked in diversity and inclusion. My feeling is you have to understand the civil war in order to understand the Current Situation in this country, and particularly in columbia. You mentioned that there ought to be some sort of commemoration for what happened during reconstruction. What would that be . I think its a really wonderful idea, but im just curious. What would that be . Thats a great question. I do not have a specific plan, but unfortunately we cannot put a plan into action today. Oh, jessica has a plan. I do not have a plan, but [indiscernible] to come up with a comprehensive examination. And of course, there is the wilson house. And i think the National Park service is bringing together a lot of historians to consult with them on how they might possibly do that and where they might possibly do that, because this is you know, the civil war has all of these sites right . We had cities, towns, all of these places that can serve for commemoration. Reconstruction does as well, but they are not as obvious and they are also many of them, are no longer in the landscape. So, they are discussing those kinds of things. Where would we put a site like that . And how would we interpret it . It is an interesting challenge. There was a big kerfuffle not a big kerfuffle, but there was a kerfuffle. In the new york times, their blog is stopping production of those columns in april with lincolns assassination. There was supposed to be a panel where we were discussing that and they were continuing there were calls for continuing that blog into the reconstruction period. The word on the street is that is not as well known as it should be. Tom brown suggested a couple of sites for commemorating reconstruction, the city hall and courthouse. That might be one place to begin. We have one question here. Yes, i want to follow up with that question. My research has touched on this , beaufort, South Carolina, we had some references to the low country. I can tell you in 2003, there were attempts to convert several sites in beaufort, South Carolina into a National Park service multisite kind of park you would be able to visit and having made several trips to beaufort i have heard that this may be back on the table for evaluation. Because this is sort of the birthplace of reconstruction beginning with Union Occupation i think this would be a really good site. I think some of these sites with black power would be really important to speaking to this narrative. It speaks to the idea i guess what im wondering is why 150 years later, sherman, who was evoked in this campaign to not create this National Park service site, and he was equated with terrorists and terrorism. And a campaign by sons of confederate veterans contributed to this not being investigated. So, i guess my question is, 150 years later why are we still debating in public memory this issue . When we know that historians have overturned this decades ago, both shermans march and reconstruction . I am wondering how connected they are, if we see sherman as the beginning of reconstruction, and do we need to look at everything as a failure from that point on . That is more of a comment. I dont know if you have anything to respond to that . Wow. That is a big last question. I would say the reason we are still talking about it 150 years later is that there is so much cultural power in the stories that are passed down and these older histories that are sold. The scholarship is in one place. The Academic Community is in one place. The popular narrative and the popular histories are in a very, very different place. Working on my book, i read as many novels about shermans march as i could and i was struck that so many published, even in the 1980s and 1990s, not terribly well known usually, still hewed to the moonlight and the magnolias image. Romance and reunion. While the language was updated in many ways the plots were straight out of the 1870s. To end on an upbeat note, i think as we approach reconstruction, this is a moment of tremendous opportunity for us. There was no centennial of reconstruction. Celebrations are commemorations or even discussion. And i think that this is the moment where we can, in the years Going Forward build on this momentum and start to grapple with the very thorny question of reconstruction. I want to add that one reason we are still talking about this, especially reconstruction, is it is not easy and there are no clear answers. There is a lot going on. For better or for worse, both academic historians in the public think about war as being two sides. There is a winner, there is a loser, and in reconstruction there is no clear good guide. You can find individual villains. You can easily find the good guys behaving badly. It does not lend itself to easy commemoration. Which is why i was hoping there would be more discussion then there might not necessarily be to tie it to a specific place then there has been. Thank you all very much. I think is there one more question . Are we all finished . [laughter] thank you very much, all of you. [applause] now please join the authors in the lobby for the book signing. Tom browns book is for sale but he will not be here to sign it. You can come back later. Thank you. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] we continue coverage marking the 50th anniversary of bloody sunday with Voting Rights advocates on a march from selma to montgomery or met with violence. Live from the brown chapel ame church the getting and 11 45 a. M. Eastern. Speakers include andrew young, Martin Luther king the third and reverend al sharpton. On cspan three. American history tv is featuring the city of galveston, texas. Caller miles two miles off the shore. Cspan staff visited sites showcasing the citys history. Learn more about galveston on American History tv. With the explosion and the growing price of cotton, and some other commodities galveston became a wealthy city. , the only way that wealth could leave here was on the decks of sailing ships