This morning we move
our camp and shift around more to the left. Brisk skirmishing is now going on
along the river, with some cannonading. In the evening we again move our
position more to the left. The capitol of South Carolina is now in full view.
The Saluda river being pontooned, we cross this evening, which throws us
between two rivers, the Saluda and the Broad, which two form a junction at
Columbia and make the Congaree.
During the night,
under cover of Stone's Brigade, of the Fifteenth Corps, which was crossed in
the afternoon, a pontoon bridge was laid across the Broad River, three miles
above Columbia. On the morning of the seventeenth, Colonel Stone, of the
Twenty-fifth Iowa, commanding Third Brigade, First Division, Fifteenth Corps,
moves towards the city. At eleven o'clock the Mayor comes out and makes a
formal surrender of the city to Col. Stone. In anticipation of General Howard,
with the army of the Tennessee, entering the city, General Sherman's orders are
to spare all dwellings, colleges, asylums, and harmless private property.
General Logan, who
stood at the end of the pontoon bridge when the last pontoon was laid, says to
Howard, with his black eyes flashing: "I will now move into this hell of
treason. But say the word and I will sweep this city from the earth." It
is now past noon. Generals Sherman and Howard have rode into the city. The
Fifteenth Corps is now moving across Broad river. The Seventh is ordered to
stay back and guard the train.
It is now night; the
wind is raging furiously; the heavens are all aglow; Columbia is enveloped in
flames; her beautiful architecture is crumbling; her gorgeous mansions are
falling; the work and labor of a century is being destroyed.
SOURCE: abstracted from Daniel Leib Ambrose, History of the Seventh Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, p. 296-7