Sherman and the Burning of Columbia (review)

BOOK REVIEWS183 Sherman and the Burning of Columbia. By Marion Brunson Lucas. (College Station: Texas A and M University Press, 1976. Pp. 188. $10.95.) On February 17, 1865, the Federal army of General William Tecumseh Sherman occupied Columbia, South Carolina. By the next morning approximately one-third of the city lay in smouldering ruins, a great fire having raged uncontrolled throughout the night. The origin of the fire has been the subject of considerable controversy from the day it occurred. Confederates blamed Sherman and his drunken men for the holocoust. Sherman in turn accused Confederate General Wade Hampton, whose cavalry withdrew from the capital city shortly before the arrival of the Federal troops. Professor Marion Lucas has with scholarly detachment attempted to find out what really happened and why. After examining all available material on the subject, he concluded that the destruction of Columbia was not the result of a single act or events of a single day. Neither was it the work of an individual or a group. Instead it was the "culmination of eight days of riots, robbery, pillage, confusion and fires, all of which were the byproducts of war. The event was surrounded by coincidence, misjudgment, and accident" (p. 163). It is impossible, he maintains, to determine with certainty the origin of the fire. "The most probable explanation was that it began from the burning cotton on Richardson street" (p. 165). Columbia at this time was a virtual firetrap because of the hundreds of cotton bales in her streets. Some of these had been ignited before Sherman arrived and a high wind spread the flamable substance over the city. Also, poorly disciplined Federal troops, many of whom were intoxicated, became incendiaries . This splendid little volume should put to rest forever the question of who burned the capital city of South Carolina. The author has presented a convincing case that the tragic events of February 17 were "an accident of war" with both Confederates and Federals sharing the responsibility for what happened. John G. Barrett Virginia Military Institute Wilkes Booth Came to Washington. By Larry Starkey. (New York: Random House, 1976. Pp. xiii, 209. $7.95.) The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau: Psychiatry and Law in the Gilded Age. By Charles E. Rosenberg. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1968. Pp. xvii, 289. Paper, $4.95.) There once was a happy time when Americans regarded political assassination as an exotic custom practiced in despotisms but ...