The World On Fire: Ocean of Fire:The Burning of Columbia, 1865 by T. Neill Anderson
Joseph LeConte didn't know what to make of Davis. His assistance on the trip to Columbus was admirable, but Joseph wasn't completely sure if he could trust him.
Joseph LeConte had traveled through the enemy lines to Augusta, Georgia, to bring his widowed sister Jane and her children to stay with them in Columbia, South Carolina, and when they arrived at the station as the train to Columbia was beginning to pull away, a Confederate officer named Charles Davis had stopped the train and helped them board. But now, weeks later, here was Davis approaching the LeConte house.
As he greeted him and invited him inside, Joseph wondered how Davis had found his house
"Oh, Dr. LeConte, you know I have my ways of finding things out," he said with a wink. "it is terribly important that you and your family leave Columbia at once," Davis said in a low voice. "The Yankees will likely arrive in the city tomorrow."
Nearby, Mary Ann, one of family's domestic slaves, crouched on the other side of the kitchen door, her hand over her mouth and her eyes wide.
"I've been in the Yankee camp all day," Davis continued, "and I know their plans." Davis was silent for a few moments. "I fear to tell you what scenes will be enacted in Columbia, Dr. LeConte. "Staying here can only bring sorrow."
Also listening to this conversation was seventeen-year-old Emma LeConte, hidden at the top of the stairs. She and her father were both wary of trusting Davis, who seemed to know the plans of both the Confederate and Yankee generals. But he had promised to assure the safety of their house and LeConte's brother's house, and prepared for the worst, the women moved into the basement, and hoped for the best, while Joseph LeConte set out for the Confederate lines with a wagonload of chemicals and medicines from the hospital, leaving only their servant Henry as the only man at the house.
"Henry," Mary Ann whispered to him, "What you think we gonna have to do when they come? I mean..., we gonna leave?"
"Ain't convinced we should," Henry said. "Them Yankees may be fightin' for us, but they ain't our friends."
The loyalties of the enigmatic, probable double agent spy Charles Davis were unknown, but his warnings were real. Columbia was the proverbial tinderbox--the state capital of South Carolina, the prime mover of the rebellion, and its business district was awash with harvested cotton bales, which the Confederates planned to burn to keep them from profiting their enemies. But Sherman's army swept in across the Congaree River and took the town before the Southern militia could burn all the bales. Buried near the river were huge quantities of armaments, and as the out-of-control and soon drunken Yankees began to loot the city, they ripped the bales open, letting the autumn winds scatter the cotton until the city looked like it had been hit by a snowstorm. Inevitably, fires began, especially as the looters spilled out barrels of alcohol into the streets from the stores and taverns. Soon most of the central city was ablaze.
In T. Neill Anderson's Horrors of History: Ocean of Fire: The Burning of Columbia, 1865
Despite its impeccable eyewitness sources, Anderson's writing in this first book in the Horrors of History series
Labels: 1861-1865--Fiction (Grades 7-11), 1865--Fiction, Columbia (S.C.)--History--Burning, Survival--Fiction, United States--History--Civil War
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