Mrs. Ravenel says in her book that Sherman destroyed all but one of the
superb old houses on the Ashley River, and when we consider that
Sherman's troops invested Charleston just before the end of the War, and
reflect upon the general's notorious "carelessness with fire," we have
cause for national rejoicing that Charleston, with its unmatched
buildings and their splendid contents, was not laid in ashes, as were
Atlanta and Columbia. Had Sherman burned Charleston it would be hard for
even a Yankee to forgive him.
Even without the aid of the Northern general, the city has been able to
furnish disastrous conflagrations of her own, over a period of two
centuries and more, and I find in the quaint reminiscences of Charles
Fraser, already alluded to, a lamentation that, because of fires, many
of the old landmarks have disappeared, and the city is "losing its look
of picturesque antiquity." To make matters worse, there came, in 1886,
an earthquake, rendering seven eighths of the houses uninhabitable until
repairs aggregating some millions of dollars had been made. Up to the
time of the earthquake the old mansion from which Lord William Campbell
fled at the beginning of the Revolution, was adorned by a battlemented
roof. It is recorded that when the shock came, an Englishman was in the
house, and that in his eagerness to get outdoors he pushed others aside.
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