Confederates Burn Columbia: Desperation in the South

The capital of South Carolina — the first state to secede from the Union — burned to the ground on the night of February 17, 1865, and the question of who set the fires has never been definitively answered. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s troops entered Columbia that morning after Confederate General Wade Hampton’s retreating forces set fire to cotton bales in the streets to prevent their capture. By dawn on February 18, roughly a third of the city was in ashes. Each side blamed the other, and the truth almost certainly involves both. Sherman’s March to the Sea had already devastated Georgia, and his northward push through the Carolinas was designed to break the Confederacy’s will to fight. South Carolina, as the cradle of secession, was a particular target. Sherman’s soldiers had been marching for months with minimal resistance, and their discipline had frayed. Many viewed South Carolina as the state that started the war and felt no obligation to treat it gently. When Sherman’s troops entered Columbia on February 17, they found cotton bales burning in the streets, set alight by retreating Confederates. High winds scattered embers across the city. Union soldiers, some of whom had broken into liquor stores, began setting additional fires. Sherman later claimed his troops fought the flames rather than started them. Eyewitness accounts from Columbia’s residents told a different story: drunken soldiers torching homes, cutting fire hoses, and preventing civilians from saving their property. By morning, 458 buildings were destroyed, including the old State House, churches, businesses, and hundreds of homes. Remarkably, the new State House under construction survived, though it still bears scars from Union artillery. Columbia’s population was left largely destitute. Sherman’s army moved on within two days, continuing north toward its next objective. Columbia’s burning became the most contested atrocity of Sherman’s campaign, weaponized by both sides for decades: the South called it proof of Union barbarism, while the North blamed Confederate recklessness with the cotton fires.