Palmetto Past & Present: The Great Charleston Fire

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by MARK POWELL

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If anybody could have ever used the holiday spirit, it was the people of Charleston in 1861. Although it wouldn’t be written for another 105 years, they could have inspired the song, “We Need a Little Christmas.”

First, the convention that declared South Carolina out of the Union the previous December had met in the Holy City. That was swiftly followed by a tense four-month standoff over the fate of Fort Sumter in its harbor, resulting in the 34-hour bombardment that triggered the bloodiest war in American history. A Federal naval blockade of Southern ports came next, and although it ramped up slowly by year’s end it was apparent its economic impact on the city would be severe.

In early November, the Yankees had sent a fleet of 18 warships and 55 supporting craft carrying 13,000 men to the state’s southern coast. They had little trouble brushing aside some 3,000 Confederates in two forts guarding the approach to Port Royal. With Hilton Head Island now in their hands, the Northerners had an important new base of operations. That sent shockwaves through Charlestonians nervously following developments 100 miles away.

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A few days later, Mary Cross Gayer, the widow of a wealthy Charleston carriagemaker, described rising tensions there to a friend in the Upstate.

“By the papers, we see that 11,000 troops are expected from New York to reinforce the Federal fleet. If so, they will attempt to land on Beaufort and march to the city — that is, if they can. Our brave boys say they will have to march over a pile of dead bodies and wade in blood before they reach Charleston — that they will meet them with bayonet, knives, and bullets, and they will never be able to return to tell how they fared. Our city is in great confusion — people moving from the island around to the city for safety. The people in the city are going off in the country. You know that when the order from Governor Francis Pickens comes for the women and children to leave the city, they will be obliged to run off without taking a second suit to their backs. When that time comes, you will see us.”

Not exactly the kind of situation that puts one in a ho-ho-ho jolly mood… but with Christmas right around the corner, Charlestonians were nonetheless looking forward to the merriment of the holidays more than ever before.

That’s when a bad situation became much, much worse…

December 11, 1861 started out like any other wartime Wednesday in the city. Blockade runners were still slipping in and out of the harbor with relative ease at the point. With regiments and artillery batteries posted all around, soldiers were continually drilling.

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Around 9:00 p.m., flames were spotted coming from a blind and sash factory on East Bay Street, near Hassell Street. There was a blustery wind that night – which was all it took to transform an accident into a catastrophe. 

Within a few minutes, a large swatch of downtown was ablaze. Families fled down darkened streets, trying to stay ahead of the rapidly moving inferno. It crossed the peninsula diagonally, spreading from East Bay Street through Meeting, Market and King Streets, reaching all the way to the northwestern part of the city.  

Everything, it seemed, conspired to create a “perfect storm” for spreading the disaster. Besides the seemingly endless wind gusts, the flames sped down narrow streets that were already 200 years old by then, lined with houses, shops, and stores built of dried old wood, creating a so-called “chimney effect.”

Making matters worse, the fire eventually reached warehouses filled with combustibles, such as cotton bales and turpentine, which further fed the flames.

“The wind whirled about great chunks of burning wood for a distance of many blocks from the blazing tenements, and the vast multitude of these red flakes, lighting up the air, gave to the scene the aspect of a fiery storm,” one journalist noted.

On top of all that, the city’s fire department wasn’t up to the job. With many firefighters serving in the army, its ranks were seriously depleted. The few available first responders gave it their best; but there simply were too few of them to stop the spread. Eventually, they resigned themselves to the inevitable. There was nothing left but to let the fire burn itself out.

By the time the final flames were out the next day, downtown Charleston looked like Hell on Earth. Literally. 

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“No tongue can describe, no pen portray the awfulness of the scene,” one newspaper reported the following day.

That was, if anything, an understatement.

On Thursday, Charlestonians began assessing the damage. And it was extensive. The massive Circular Congregational Church — gone. Institute Meeting Hall, where the Ordinance of Secession had been ceremoniously signed just 51 weeks earlier — gone. The Charleston Theatre, long the city’s cultural heartbeat — gone. The Charleston Hotel, one of the most opulent in the entire South — gone. The Charleston Mercury, one of the most influential newspapers in the Confederacy — gone.

And on and on it went – cutting a charred swath of smoldering ruin for more than a mile across the peninsula.

Even Charleston’s wartime enemies were appalled. The Northern Harper’s Weekly reported a few days later, “a more terrible conflagration has seldom been visited on an American city.”

The statistics concurred. Modern research suggests that between 550 and 600 structures covering approximately 540 acres were destroyed.

The devastation was so extensive, it was mindboggling when other South Carolinians first got the news. My upcoming book, Witness to War: The Story of the Civil War Told By Those Who Lived It, contains an account written ten days later by a young Union soldier on Hilton Head Island.

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“I presume you have heard of the burning of the city of Charleston, S.C.,” the soldier wrote. “The folks here had to hear of it quite a number of times before they would believe it. We were, at last, however, compelled to credit it. A steamer came from there today and confirmed it.”

Sadly, it was the first of three great fires that would rock South Carolina during the War Between the States. A blaze that started in a wooden stable behind a hotel on the night of November 5-6, 1864, destroyed much of downtown Greenville. And the majority of Columbia was a charred ruin after Sherman’s men passed through on February 17-18, 1865. 

In the Lowcountry, Charleston soldiered on. Manpower and capital shortages caused by the war meant there was very little rebuilding. Folks simply cleaned up the place as best they could and went on with their daily lives. Shortages caused by the blockade grew increasingly worse with each month. Throughout 1863-1864, Union cannon systematically bombarded the city, including shells filled with Greek Fire, an early incendiary material designed to spark fires when it exploded.

But the Holy City hung on until the bitter end. The reconstruction of damage left by the Great Fire and subsequent bombardment didn’t begin in earnest until the Reconstruction Era. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…

J. Mark Powell is an award-winning former TV journalist, government communications veteran, and a political consultant. He is also an author and an avid Civil War enthusiast. Got a tip or a story idea for Mark? Email him at mark@fitsnews.com.

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