[4CJ]

Sounds like something the Klan would do. Could very well have been Nathan Bedford Forrest and his lunatic fringe having a good old time dressed as "bluebellies."

BS. The klan wasn't even around in 1863. An the Official Records have several accounts of preachers/priests arrested for failure to pray for King Lincoln.

[Gianni]

Interesting, but in searching for the convent in Columbia, I came across several accounts wherein rockets were used to signal the start of the burning and looting. The union troops were well established in the city, and the rockets were purportedly a signal that Sherman and his officer corps had retired from the city and cut them loose. One account even had the breakdown/distribution schedule for the loot.

If so, the destruction was far more organized than what I had thought (i.e. these were not in any way the acts of drunks or renegades as others describe).