When Sherman Rode Into Columbia, S.C., an Escaped Union POW Handed Him a Note. Here's the Words.
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- čas přidán 17. 06. 2024
- Major General William T. Sherman's forces entered Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, on Feb. 17, 1865. As Sherman rode through the conquered city he met numerous individuals, including escaped Union prisoners of war. One of these bedraggled men handed him a note. Sherman stuffed into his pocket and read it later. The words on the piece of paper were the lyrics of a song written by the man pictured here.
"Life on the Civil War Research Trail" is hosted by Ronald S. Coddington, Editor and Publisher of Military Images magazine. Learn more about our mission to showcase, interpret and preserve Civil War portrait photography at militaryimagesmagazine.com and shopmilitaryimages.com.
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Image: Mahaska County Historical Society, Oskaloosa, Iowa
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Byers was a first cousin of my great-grandmother, they were both born in 1838 in western Pennsylvania. My father remembered when he was a young boy an elderly man came to visit relatives in the area. This was Byers come to visit family where he had been born near Pulaski, PA, probably in the mid- to late 20's.
Amazing!
Thanks for sharing your story
As a person who had folks on both sides of the war, including a slave owner, an abolitionist, a slave, and a POW in Andersonville, every one of them a grandparent in my lines, I full well know war IS hell.
The lesson here is, if you can't be useful, at least be pleasant company.
My great great great grandfather fought in the battle at Gettysburg. I am in my mid sixties and found this out through geneology a year ago. I am originally from and grew up in Western Pennsylvania.
We western Pennsylvanians definitely represented in the civil war. I to am in my very late sixties was told how my great great grandfather was in the south purchasing horses when the war broke out. He basically traveled the underground railroad back north and became a Captain of Cavalry and was a noted marksman even from atop horseback. He got his commission from his stables, he earned it with accurate lead.
My grandfather was 7 years old at the time of the Gettysburg battle. My youngest son was born 120 years after my grandfather.
My mother's mother's side of the family defended their homes and churches at Brabams Bridge in the Low County below Orangburg on the Edisto. Sherman burned the Baptist Church to the ground and the homes of the five klans that made up the community. Sherman was a monster! South Carolinians and other Southerners have an oderous regard for Sherman that can only be surpassed by that of the Sioux, Crow, Cheyhan, and other Native Americans that came under the treatment of those who learned Sherman's practice of total war, Sheridan, Crow, Custer and others.
@@cliffpage7677 And Y'all were such saints. If you hadn't started it, Sherman wouldn't have needed to finish it.
My paternal grandmother’s maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Caroline Maria Sherman, a distant cousin of the General and his brother, the Senator. Thank you for this touching story of our Cousin Cump.
Thank you for that video. The American Civil War was, mercifully, the last conflict where I know I had relatives on both sides of a battle.
Scraps and bits of paper were the emails of the 1860s!
One of my great great grand fathers marched with Sherman to the Sea. Indiana artillery attached to an Ohio infantry regiment. Wounded five times.
Gen Sherman was born and grew up just around the corner from here. Lancaster, Ohio, long a Confederate stronghold, did not appreciate him much. There's a small statue of the gentleman downtown, just standing there holding his hat. Ohio offered to erect a far larger, equestrian statue around 1900, but the locals refused it. Check out the across the street from the Plaza Hotel (in Central Park, actually) in New York City. Sherman never came back to Lancaster..
They pronounce it LANK-ister. I grew up in Newark, pronounced Nerk.
WOW, that is an excellent piece of history brought back to us. Thank you for your excellent work.
As I recall, the SC statehouse has several bronze stars on one side, to mark where Gen. Sherman's cannon balls struck. The population did not want to forget!
Indeed! I live near Columbia. The bronze stars are still there and across the river there is marker where Sherman's canons stood.
great reading Ron, you took us there...
Confederate states burned cotton bales when union forces entered southern cities to prevent union from confiscation and sale of bales (10k).
Great story. I love learning of the personal accounts of those who participated.
Great piece. Very much helps to bring history into realism.
"Uncle Billy" has been my hero all my life.
The song written in 1864/65 I guess it is safe to assume that he won't be demonetized by CZcams for copyright infringement🙂
On the highway driving and in politics….ASSUME NOTHING!
There is a good possibility that the song never got submitted for a copyright.
@@genespell4340 >It was meant only as a joke.
A lot of truth in jest. If an ASCAP/RIAA patent troll hears of it, I suspect they'll "reach out" to the channel.
That was such a great story.
Thank you for posting
this is the first time I have heard of Sherman's march in anything but a negative connotation. thank you
Sherman's Army liberated Andersonville, a POW camp for Union prisoners. Conditions had been horrible. It was after this that Sherman showed no mercy.
@@veramae4098 Maybe he should have toured Camp Douglas and Elmira, plus a few other large Union POW camps. He might have changed sides.
I find this video quite interesting, as my Great Grandfather was an OVI Sargent who fought along side of Sherman to the sea.
Fascinating!
thank you
Great story.
Us Iowa folks are very creative...
As someone that's done RAGBRAI a dozen times, I agree!
@@rb1179 Good man. We like repeat riders.
We Iowa folks...
6.19.24. ⛹🏻♀️Caitlin Clark … the WNBA’s💁🏻♂️Larry Bird™️
@@stevensapyak7971she is nowhere near Bird level! Get real
Good one. Uplifting 😊
Always interesting. Especially the biographic details of the people involved.
Amazing story!
wow to live that long and witness so many changes...
Absolutely brilliant.
Nice song. Sherman must have been quite pleased.
And I always thought the phrase "Sherman's March to the Sea" was a phrase used by historians AFTER the war. So Sherman was a legend in song in his own time! So much so that a prisoner of war (confederate prisoner at that) knew of Sherman's movements and where he was going and had time to get pen AND paper and still have enough of cheery soul to write an ode or song.
Wonderful song....Thanks very much.....
Old F-4 Phantom ll pilot Shoe🇺🇸
As a Nevadan. Nevada sent Silver, gold, and men to the North, to fight the South. How Nevada became a state in the United States.
🫡🇺🇸👍🏽
loved that !
Thank you
Excellent! Earned a sub!
Another great show. Many of my family members fought Sherman all the way to around Atlanta and one chased him on his march to the sea. Ah well, by gones are by gones. Great show.
Great story. It traveled well. All the way to to 2024 with its magic intact.
Great! Thanks for this!
My great grandfather was in Sherman's Army, and I have lived in the area they conquered since 1961.
Wow. I was rapt! What a story! Thank you!!!
Very impressive...
Thanks for another winner Ron. Would it be possible to do some research into the song's intended melody?
I would very much like to know the melody to which these lyrics would be sung to. As it stands, it is a wonderful and clever panegyric poem, but it would be more pleasurable and more easily memorized if it could be sung to a tune. I know that there were many such songs in those days (when people had to make their own music) that were sung to older Irish, Scottish, French, German and English Folk tunes, in addition to the very popular Steven Foster melodies of the day.
That's exactly what I was wondering about. Some of the most well-known songs we have today, such as The Star-Spangled Banner and Amazing Grace, were simply sets of words, poems, with no melody whatsoever. Both of these were married to various melodies as time went on, and at some point became associated with the tunes we associate with them today (To Anacreon in Heaven, and New Britain, respectively). What might be done, if the original tune can't be found, is to marry it to a popular tune of that time that suits the meter of the lyrics. It was done with the early 19th century sea-song The Baltimore, of which only the lyrics survived. Married to a strong shanty-tune it makes a wonderful song. (I read that later the original tune was discovered, as it happens not nearly as nice as the old shanty-tune!)
Epic lyrics ❤️😘🐐🎠🌙
Wonderful living history. We have changed.
Amazing
Quite an episode. I would really loved to have heard the POW glee club sing this song. Thanks for doing this research…...
See The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly! Lol!
wonderful bits of history
I always like your podcasts. This one was especially fun.
This is the first time I've listtened to your program. Well done! I am distantly related to Champ Ferguson, who turned outlaw at the end of the war. If I remember correctly his father was a brother to my great great grandfather on my mother's side of the family. I am interested in the stories of the civil war. My mother's family, on both sides, were from Clinton county, KY. My dad's family were from Virginia, but to my knowledge did not serve on either side.
Very Interesting. All trained historians long to discover true to life moments of humanity like this. Great work!
Considering modern times as they are today, and then hearing this, I fear that we have lost something, something very important and very wonderful along the way. What it is we will never know, and will never understand, unless we discover it again....
"Here ARE the words..."
My great grandfather's brothers unit was the 3rd Wwisconsin and was therw.
Hoorah!
amadeususawater Yes we are! I am surprised that an Iowa Union soldier was a POW in South Carolina. I thought Iowa soldiers mainly served in the west.
Sherman was leading a western army.
When was Buyers captured? During or after the march?
My forefathers fought against Sherman. As Sherman marched towards Charleston, any Confederate solders left in hopes of diverting the union soldiers away. Also Sherman did his early training at Fort Moultrie in Charleston and made friends with many families there. That was two reasons he did not obliterate Charleston as he did Atlanta.
"Here's the words." I'll pass.
wow, this should be should not be forgotten ,powerfull words. thank you
“ A song from the American Civil War. In September 1864 General Sherman advanced from Chattanooga to Atlanta and then cut a swath of desolation through central Georgia to Savannah. After reaching his objective on the Georgia coast in December, he turned North, where hundreds of ragged Federal soldiers in Charleston Jail were eagerly awaiting their freedom. One of them, Lieutenant S. H. M. Byers, composed this song. Although he wrote a tune, it was more frequently sung to the Irish melody of "Rosin the Beau". The song became a big hit in the North, appearing in thousands of copies of song sheets and songbooks.”
More at:
czcams.com/video/9dvvUnTJh4g/video.html&pp=ygUhU29uZyAtIFNoZXJtYW4ncyBtYXJjaCB0byB0aGUgc2Vh
"With Fire and Sword" and "Switzerland and the Swiss" were authored by S.H.M. Byers. Thanks for the great information. These books are available on Amazon.
Sherman wasn’t a good person, but that doesn’t mean that the Union cause was unjust. Slavery is the greatest evil ever perpetrated by Americans. War is horrible, but letting slavery continue would have been 1000 times more horrible. I say this as a southerner.
The war actually had very little to do slavery and there were actually more slaves in the north than the south-CHECK REAL FACTS AND NOT BS.
Really he wasn't bad. It was war, that's what happens in war.
Good ol' Uncle Billy!
👋
Please add a performance of the song.
I found a version and posted it!
czcams.com/video/9dvvUnTJh4g/video.htmlsi=yD5T1u0zRjoMTHlQ
Nice Civil War interlude, with a musical side story. We're so glad you didn't try to sing it, Ron.
You've got a good, sincere, gravelly voice for documentary. We appreciate what you bring.
But music is a refined and different discipline.
Leave it to the inmates. Whose fans were the Southern Belles.
I wish more high school history courses talked about "little" things like this instead of lists of dates of famous battles, etc. Yeah, that's important too but you've also got to get an understanding that people are people regardless of the age in which they lived. Otherwise it's all just old stuff that couldn't happen now because we're (fill in the blank: wiser, smarter, don't think that way, etc.) and therefore not relevant and not interesting.
Here are.
If anyone wants to hear the song's melody accompanied by voice and acoustic guitar there is a CZcamsr --- raymondcrooke video titled "Sherman's March to the Sea (by SHM Byers)" you can check out.
War is Hell!
And now for my third and final comment: what were the circumstances behind Byers capture? Was he taken prisoner during the Battles of Atlanta, or during the March to the Sea?
Byers and about 80 others from his regiment were captured at the November 1863 Battle of Missionary Ridge.
Would have been nice if he had found four or five people to actually sing the song?
I am hopeful that someone will be inspired to find a group of singers to make it happen.
People today write stuff and call it poetry, but mostly it can't compare with Byers' work.
Well, all I can say, that Capt Rhett Butler, at Tara, warned the South about what was to come! They didn't listen!🤪
And then he fought for the South.
why don't you read the part of his memior where he rescued a lady who had a book signed by Sherman....Sherman could have recovered all the men at Andersonville while he was chilling in Atlanta...but he did not because they would slow him down.....
War was war, you fight to win and keep your troops as safe as possible…get over it..
Wondering why the song doesn’t mention the 20 mile wide path Sherman burned throughout the South, destroying homes, farms, livestock, not to mention all the lives his hateful march took through the already conquered south land.
I suppose he is still rotting in Hell.
FWIW, a slightly different account of the out-of-control fires in Columbia was that evacuating Confederate military leaders advised city leaders to destroy all liquor supplies in advance of the arrival of occupying Union forces. Apparently, the city leaders failed to do this and later, drunken Union soldiers, bent on punishing South Carolina for starting the war, set fire to cotton bales, which then spread to numerous buildings. Apparently, as the city had surrendered, the burning of Columbia was not intentional.
Note: this account was in a book - read decades ago - about the closing months of the war. (The author and title escape my memory, at the moment.) Apparently, the Union soldiers wanted to advance on and burn Charleston in revenge, but the Union forces bypassed Charleston to proceed north towards Richmond, VA.
The Geneva Convention had just been formed in the early 1860’s. in Europe. I’ve read If it had had a few more years Sherman would have probably been one of the first prosecuted under their laws. He burned and allowed his troops to pillage from the citizens all across the Southeast. Civilian’s starved because of his actions.
Remember, The winner writes the History Books. They omit these parts.
Yes, though there had been widely recognized laws of war in Europe and America for centuries before Sherman came along. It was British violations of these laws in South Carolina during the Revolution which were largely responsible for the backlash which ultimately secured independence for all the united States.
As they left Columbia the Union troops burned the city to the ground, leaving all - black and white - destitute and homeless.
Sherman should have been a model soldier, like Anderson and Quantrel. Rite.??
@@GeorgeIngersoll-cj9ok ALot if that’s who got to tell the story.
I know it was a movie but Outlaw Josie Wales can tell you a lot. It’s probably more factual than what the powers to be have printed in their books.
I wonder what you’d be reading if the Nazis had won WW2 ?
@@GeorgeIngersoll-cj9ok - Quantrill was reacting to Union soldiers killing non-combatants including women. Even so the Confederate government cut ties to him because of his war crimes.
By contrast, Lincoln repeatedly promoted officers who committed war crimes against civilians.
@@alanlight7740 must be a Democrat, rewriting history again
One brother wore blue
One brother wore gray
One brother went
One brother stayed
One brother's here
One brother's there
Oh, where shall I fight
Oh, what shall I wear?
I'm gonna wear my tight blue pants
And my gray sport jacket
And stay at home with the girls
Now, now, now
I don't want to get to Gettysburg
No, no, no, no
I got a protest sign
And a bottle of wine
And my baby and I are gonna
Go, go, go, go
Now, Grant and Lee
Don't mean nothin' to me
And fightin's nothin' but a bore
I'll wear my tight blue pants
And my gray sport jacket
And to hell with the Civil War
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them,...
...that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Seems like the South had every right to succeed...
They may have had a right to secede, but it was up to them to succeed.
How strange that a local Columbia women's group would hire a POW gleeclub to sing about the Confederate defeat.
Yankee propaganda shees
@brandonlollis1506 poor neoconfederate
I imagine they sang popular songs of the day, the sort of music sung in taverns. Also religious music. If I'd been one of them, the last thing I'd want to sing would be a tune glorifying Sherman. They wrote and sang it when no one was around, to keep up morale.
I can certainly see the Columbians treating the POWs civily. You only have to look at POW camps in the US for Germans during WWII. If the ladies did have the glee club over for a visit I doubt seriously it was with the knowledge they would sing a song like that. Either was an embellishment by the POWs or or a surprise attack by the prisoners on the fine ladies of Columbia.
As a South Carolinian, I take umbrage with this story. So typical of "the victor writing the history". Sherman actually wrote that he told the mayor that no harm would come to the people of Columbia or the town? If so, he was a damned liar! History shows that Sherman exacted a particularly brutal treatment upon the town, burning most of it to the ground and leaving its citizens devoid of food and shelter. He did so deliberately to punish the capitol of South Carolina for being the first state to secede from the Union. And that nice little song? What a delightful description of the hell Sherman's troops brought to those they encountered along their storied march to the sea. Sherman said he would "make Georgia howl", remember? Well, the Georgians did and they were primarily women and children as their men were either dead, POWs or trying to return home. Crops were destroyed, homes were burned and though Sherman ordered that his men not engage in rape, thievery or other crimes, they did anyway and with very little reprimand. That you could tell this story with a smile and without a hint of an inclusion of the facts behind it leaves me speechless.
As an 8th generation south Carolinian. I 100% agree with you.
Shall we talk about what your ancestors were doing to black people in South Carolina for the prior 90 years and then discuss the injustice of Sherman's march again?
Sure, right after we duscuss the injustices committed by the black people that sold those black people to the northerners who controlled all the shipping, then how those northerners committed injustices to those same black people until they found that it was cheaper to commit injustices to Irish, Scottish and asian immigrants, so sold their remaining black people to southerners. Then we can discuss the injustices they committed against southerners by taxing southern exports and using the proceeds to fund northern infrastructure. We could go on for some time...
War crimes are just that.
@@scottwhitcher265 And defense of slavery is also just that, no matter your whataboutism.
Shall we talk about what your ancestors were doing to black peoplle when the North dominated the "triangle trade" for 200+ years bringing hundreds of thousands of African slaves, not only to the States but to Brazil, Jamaica, and the British Antilles. It was the astute Yankee merchantmen who early on learned of the enormous profits to be made in the trade of Africans. In 1636, the "Desire", the first ship designed and built for the transport of African slaves was launced from the slipways of Marblehead, Mass.
I can’t believe that a vengeful Southerner didn’t look Sherman up a few years after he retired and made him pay for his war crimes against Southern civilians.
So, flattery will get you somewhere.......
Sherman the great!!👍🏼🙏🏽🙌🏾🔥😘❤️🐐
Hunh? The man devastated Southern civilians against the rules of war. And did the racial problem go away?
The south did it go themselves by enslaving the negro for 100 years before the civil war. By the time the racists southerners fired on Sumter, this was their penance !!
Ahhhh, yes. The war criminal, Sherman.
Sherman tanks caught the real war criminals.
History is always written through the eyes of the victors. Sherman, remembered in the South as a villainous conqueror, was doing the business of the Union’s leadership. Sadly, it has always been so, those who set in motion the destruction of property and loss of life are too “civilized” to contemplate the harsh realities of conquest/pacification.
The Southerners have written a great many histories of the War, some of them true.
Well, after promising the mayor that Union troops intended no harm to the citizens of the town, they _did_ burn it all down. But not until it was of no further use to them.
But this was in line with Sherman's stated desire to exterminate the southern people, just as he wished to exterminate Indians - and of course that was essentially the business of the Union's leadership.
Like Abe Lincoln and his ilk?
@@alanlight7740 Being a Southerner, I was not a fan of Sherman, I just recently learned of his exploits concerning the American Indians. He truly was not an honorable man.
Make no mistake, had Sherman had nukes available, he would have used against Dixie. He was a pioneer and an advocate of total war.
Ten minutes in . . .
Screw Sherman!
Here's the words. ??????????
Is this something that the couple hundred years later people know everything what everybody said what everybody thought but nothing was ever wrote down we don’t have any machines at the recorded your voice back then everybody’s got their own idea and most of them are full of shit Jerry Mcdonogh
I love all the comments from the defenders of the Lost Cause.
I lived in Columbia for a time several years ago. One of the questions I frequently encountered was "So who are your people", meaning where did I come from and what was my background. It came across not as a friendly inquiry a type of value judgment. I usually explained that I came Colorado via Iowa.
My grandfather was from upstate New York. His father was too young but six of his uncles fought in is Civil War for the Union. One of them died at Fredericksburg.
Eventually I tired of the "who are your people" question and finally chose to answer by telling them that my people were the ones that kicked your butts in the Civil War. That usually brought a quick end to the inquiries.
We kicked your butt pretty well until we were outproduced,outnumbered and blockaded.
Proud Columbia native !
@@NopiusMaximusOnly kicked butt because the weak leadership of the North initially that 3 times could have ended the war but didn't pursue the advantage. It wasn't until Lincoln finally removed the weak and indecisive and brought in true equal leadership that the advantage held to end the war. The South had numerous chances to industrialize but the power of the slave holders kept all but a few cities focused on agrarian society. Atlanta was probably the only truly industrialized city. Many had industry but Atlanta went at it with gusto. That's why Sherman's army razed the place. Since Georgia and Virginia were the wealthiest states in the confederacy they became the targets to destroy to weaken the resolve of the rebellion.
Also innthat crowd was Widrow WILSON THEN A SMALL CHILD
Woodrow Wilson was living in Augusta, Ga at that time, a city that was bypassed by Sherman on his March to Savannah
Hearing this is would be comparable to hearing O. J. Simpson say that Nichole B. Simpson and Ron Goldman stabbed each other.
Probably not widely known but one of Sherman's sons went to Notre Dame.
Died in 1933, wholly cow.
Token magnanimity does not make up for the decisions and actions of Sherman during his 'march to the sea'. Sherman's destruction of the farms of the South was a heinous crime. There was, however, a bit of good in Sherman, as there is in most people. After all, even Hitler would pet a dog.
If Hood had mounted a better defense, then none one this would have happened. People deride the previous commander but he would have he’d off Sheerman for weeks longer, maybe costing Lincoln his office. Wonder what terms McClellan would have offered Davis?
@@johnschuh8616
Of course if lincoln was a decent mam and if the yankees had stayed home where they belonged, none of it would have happened either
Sherman's goal was to bring the war to a conclusion. If you study any of the other wars of that time period his was not much different than Napoleon, the British or others. It is easy to be self-righteous using today's standards. This was long before the Geneva Convention. This was child's play compared to the total destruction of WW1 or 2.
What's up with the hand stuffed into the jacket pose ???
He was modeling for his pen pal, Napoleon IV, lol!
heard it was a Masonic thing, i cant confirm.
Mason!
That was quite common at the time
Damn Yankees.😮
🇺🇸🗽💙✌🏽