“S” is for Sherman’s march. This campaign under General William Tecumseh Sherman is one of the more controversial of the Civil War because of the damage it wrought to civilian property. On February 1,1865 Sherman’s forces began their thirty-mile-wide march into South Carolina. Despite skirmishes, the Union army reached Columbia without much opposition. Along the way some fourteen small towns (including Orangeburg and Lexington) were looted and torched. On February 17th one-third of Columbia was destroyed by fire. As the army moved north, portions of Winnsboro, Camden, and Cheraw were burned. The campaign embittered White Southerners who believed that making war on noncombatants was dishonorable. Especially as it passed through South Carolina, the march presaged the “total war” that   would become common during the twentieth century. For enslaved Black Carolinians, however,   Sherman’s march meant freedom. 

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