Legend holds that one or two instances of creative fiction spared the church.
The city of Columbia burned in February 1865 after Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s troops had occupied it. By then, the Union army under his command had acquired a reputation for setting fires, having blazed a trail across Georgia after burning Atlanta.
Two Theories: Sherman or the Rebs
There are two theories about the burning of Columbia. One holds that the General continued his incendiary tactics, bent on punishing the state that started the war by seceding from the Union and firing on an American garrison flying the American flag at Fort Sumter.
The other holds that the Confederate Army, hoping to keep the cotton bales stored in the city from falling into Yankee hands, had set fire to them in the streets. High winds spread the fire, and the city burned.
Some hold that, since the city was burning anyway, the Union troops decided to make sure that the birthplace of the rebellion was not spared. Walter Edgar, in his book, South Carolina, a History, gives a graphic description of the city's destruction.
Site of Secessionist Convention
First Baptist Church was the site of the convention that first approved of secession. It was chosen because the Statehouse was not available; the legislature was using it at the time.
“Since Southern evangelicals believed God had ordained the institution of slavery, and since South Carolinians sought secession to preserve slavery, evangelicals concluded that true religion sustained the South’s political independence,” wrote Georgory A. Willis in his history of the church.
The convention gave its blessing to secession, then, fleeing an outbreak of smallpox, adjourned to Charleston, where it adopted the formal declarations that made the separation official.
South Carolina’s Declaration of Secession
Its official declaration noted the recent triumph of the Republican Party in the national election, and asserted:
“On the 4th of March next, this party will take possession of the government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunal shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States. . . .
“The guarantees of the Constitution will then no longer exist; . . . The slaveholding states will no longer have the power of self-government or self-protection, and the federal government will have become their enemy.”
Therefore, they declared, “the Union heretofore existing between this state and the other states of North America is dissolved; and that the state of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world as [a] separate and independent state . . .”
Three Neighboring Churches
The original First Baptist Church was built in 1811, but in 1859 the congregation built another church just down the street. The Methodists also built a church nearby. The 1859 church still stands and has been expanded. The 1811 church and the Methodist Church were burned.
Legend holds that when Union troops asked directions to First Baptist Church, a porter for a clothing store owned by a church member pointed down the street to the original structure. Another holds that Douglas Clark, the church sexton, pointed down the street to the Methodist Church.
Wherever the truth lies, Columbia did burn in 1865, and the First Baptist Church where the secessionist convention first convened still stands. The older church building was burned, however, along with the nearby Methodist Church.
Sources: Walter Edgar, South Carolina, a History, University of South Carolina Press, 1998; Bruce Catton, The Civil War, American Heritage Publisdhing, 1960, South Carolina Declarations, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., Annals of America, Vol. 9, 1976.
Gene Owens - Gene Owens is a veteran of more than 50 years of newspaper writing. At his retirement in 2003 from the Press-Register in Mobile, Ala., the ...
