The Burning of Columbia, S.C.

Daniel Trezevant was a respected physician of Columbia, South Carolina, in his late sixties. In February 1865 he had just delivered the baby of a frail mother, when U.S. soldiers, who had been busy robbing the house, burst into the room declaring that they wanted to see a “Rebel born.” Later that evening, he witnessed other heroes in blue torching his and neighbours’ houses, while preventing him from rescuing the portrait of his son killed in the Mexican War.

Dr. Trezevant wrote and published his eyewitness account of U.S. war crimes against women, children, black Southerners, private property, and civil institutions a few months after the war. His account has not much been noticed, unlike the witness of William Gilmore Simms and Emma LeConte. It is now made available, with material from Trezevant’s unpublished papers, by Karen Stokes, the authority on Sherman in South Carolina.

Lest we forget.