Home Robert W. Sanders
Confederate Veteran Mag., dated Jan., 1928, page 10.
 
The following was contributed by ROBERT W. SANDERS, of Greenville, S.C. :

" A native of South Carolina, and one whose residence has been in the 'Palmetto State' since his birth - now over 80 years ago - I was 13 years old when the Secession Ordinance of South Carolina was adopted, Dec. 20, 1860. More than once the venomous printed statement has gone forth that the ordinance was passed in Columbia, S.C. That however , is a mistake.... I remember well when the news of the secession of S.C. was flashed to  Barnwell, my native county[ dist. as it was called then]. There was great excitement and also enthusiasm over it. Cleaving, as S. Carolinians still do, to the State Rights doctrine as advocated and defended by JOHN C. CALHOUN, but few people in the state  perhaps expected the bloody war to follow. They mistakenly thought that the State would go out of the Union and join with other states, peaceably forming the Confederacy.

The Secession Convention held its meetings while sitting in Columbia, in the First Baptist Church edifice, which stands there yet, with its stately columns fronting Hampton Ave. The congregation had previously worshipped there for years in a much smaller and far less imposing church building on another street. And I read this story [ no doubt a true one] that when Sherman's army entered Columbia, Feb. 17, 1865, some of his men made inquiries of an old negro as to where the old building was, so they might burn it. They did burn the small old church house, believing that the Secession Convention had been held in it, instead of the large new building in which the  convention had really met. Hence, the building in which the assembly took place, before moving to Charleston, escaped the enraged enemy's torch. This cruel torch[ or rather torches] was applied by Sherman's soldiers in many other places, however and much of the beautiful city was left in ashes, as were homes, ginhouses and the like, burned by that army along its relentless march from Savannah, Ga. to Greensboro, N.C.

Misled people, in some sections of our great country, seem to have believed the false allegation against Gen. WADE HAMPTON that he burned Columbia by having bales of cotton fired on the streets of that city. There is no doubt that the city was destroyed by numerous fires from the hands of Sherman's army. This fact has been several times stated to me by aged, truthful, and honorable citizens of Columbia , eyewitnesses of the cruelties of the Northern soldiers whom they saw set the fires a-going. 

The story that HAMPTON burned Columbia has no more truth in it than the cruelly false report that President JEFFERSON DAVIS was in woman's clothes when he was captured on that memorable night while camping near a spring, a day's journey from Washington, Ga., whence he had departed that morning about nine o'clock."
 
 
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