Sunsettommy
Diamond Member
- Mar 19, 2018
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I posted the QUOTE from your Wikipedia Link.
You didn't look in the link I supplied which was supporting the February 1865 time frame..... obviously since this is what I was referring to:
South Carolina. The blockade runner Chicora, under Master John Rains, was the last blockade-runner to enter Charleston and it left harbour prior to the evacuation of the city during the night.
South Carolina. Forces under Confederate Lieutenant-General William Joseph Hardee began to evacuate Charleston. The Confederates at Charleston had successfully endured 567 days of repeated attacks by land and sea. During the night, Fort Moultrie, Fort Sumter, Fort Johnson, Fort Beauregard, and Castle Pinckney were abandoned, and the Confederate garrisons marched northward towards Cheraw, and then to join the army gathering in North Carolina. The ironclads CSS Palmetto State, CSS Chicora, and CSS Charleston and the large, new ironclad CSS Columbia were at risk of capture. CSS Columbia were ran aground near Fort Moultrie after leaving the dock, and had to be abandoned. It was eventually salvaged by the Union navy. Captain John Randolph Tucker scuttled and destroyed the CSS Palmetto State, CSS Chicora, and CSS Charleston by fire and explosives prior to the withdrawal. Tucker took their crews by train to join the naval detachment defending Wilmington. Tucker’s detachment eventually reached Whiteville, about 50 miles west of Wilmington, where he learned that Union troops had cut the rail line between the two cities, and that the evacuation of Wilmington was imminent. After unsuccessfully trying to obtain rail transportation, Tucker’s men began a 125 mile march to Fayetteville.
Columbia, South Carolina. Union Major-General Thomas Joseph Wood’s division (1/XV) from Major-General William Tecumseh Sherman’s forces occupied the state capital of Columbia. Mayor T J Goodwyn surrendered the city. The Confederate rear-guards had left during the morning, encumbered by thousands of refugees. Sherman arrived in person at noon to view the hotbed of secession. One of Wood’s Union brigades was assigned to hold the city while a second marched through to encamp beyond it. Following the custom of the march across South Carolina, the garrison brigade spread out across the city to wreck all military installations. Looting broke out and liquor stores were opened and drained. Union Major-General Oliver Otis Howard asserted discipline and brought back the second brigade to take control over the liquor. It was too late and some of the new arrivals joined in the mayhem. In the chaos, 370 men were arrested, two were shot and killed, and 30 more were wounded.
Fires broke out both accidentally and deliberately in a dozen places, spreading rapidly in the windy weather to the tinder-dry bales of cotton. Another Union division was called in to fight the fires and to suppress the arsonists. The mansions of prominent Southerners and historic places of the secession movement were burned, suggesting a deliberate policy of vengeful destruction. The Union commanders did all in their power to restrict the spread of the fire, but by sunrise more than two-thirds of the city blocks were destroyed by an immense conflagration, which was fanned by high winds during the night. The Palmetto Armoury, which had produced small arms and artillery ammunition for the Confederacy, was partially destroyed, along with the business districts and many important buildings. Sherman suggested in his official report that Confederate cavalry under Lieutenant-General Wade Hampton had set fire to huge stores of cotton bales that had accumulated before they fled and this contributed to the blaze. Sherman never expressed regret for the destruction although he insisted that he had neither ordered nor wished for it to happen. He conceded later that he blamed Hampton primarily to undermine the reputation of his opponent.
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Your stupidity is quickly becoming legend.
