Graphic picture of a Sacked city.
A correspondent of the Charlotte Carolinian, writing from Columbia, gives a graphic picture of the destruction of that city. He says:‘ General Sherman entered about midday, accompanied by one Bergholtz (who formerly lived in Columbia, and was employed by Hon. G. A. Trenholm in laying out the grounds around his mansion. Notwithstanding the many tokens of kindness he had received, the villain was afterwards instrumental in laying the house in ashes). Guards were placed around many of the dwellings, but without avail. As if by preconcerted action, robbery immediately commenced, and was continued until the enemy left.--Words would fail to describe the frequent indignities and the brutality of the wretches who offered them.--No house was safe from their pollution, no hiding-place secure from their search. The chamber of the sick and the sanctity of the church were nothing. Rev. Dr. Shand was robbed of his communion service in the street. The Convent (the Mother Superior of which is said to have been instrumental in the education of the niece and daughter of General Sherman) was broken open and the innocent Sisters of Mercy and other inmates stripped of their all. The very altars were desecrated, and the Lady Superior, while appealing, with cross in hand, to the humanity of the soldiers, was rudely thrust aside. The building was afterwards fired. The Methodist Church--an humble edifice — was likewise entered, and, unable to do more, the scoundrels defaced the monument of the venerable Bishop Capers, and spoke of him as "the first damned Secessionist." They then went into the parsonage, robbed it of everything, abused the pastor's wife, stole the communion service, drank the consecrated wine, and blasphemed God and Jesus Christ in the most horrid manner.
’ The conflagration, which commenced in the evening of Friday, destroyed nearly four-fifths of the city. The horrors of that night are as a dream. Pen cannot describe them. The city was like a sea of fire. Thousands of drunken brutes were rushing through the streets, with torches in their hands, shouting, shrieking, cursing, and even fiddling and dancing, over our burning homes.--Women and children were driven from their dwellings by the flames, only to be robbed of the few articles they had gathered in their flight. Little ones, with tiny bundles of their own in their arms, brought them forth only to see them thrown back into their burning home or scattered in fragments at their feet. Sick and dying went by on beds to seek shelter in the woods, and old men, whose white locks and venerable aspect should have spared them a reproach, received indignities that none but hearts utterly sunk in depravity could have prompted.
