You mean the Union Captain I quoted was secretly on the Confederate side? Pepper also says on his way into Columbia the next day after the fire, he was met by crowds of soldiers:
"waving gold watches, handfuls of gold, jewelry, and rebel shinplasters [rb: paper money] in the air, and boasting of having burned the town." [page 312-313]
Hmmm. Maybe you ought to give Confederate accounts more weight rather than dismissing them or trying to play them down.
So evil men took advantage of the chgaos of war? War is rough. Those criminals were no worse than similar criminals associated with the Confederate army. The only difference was that the Union army at least tried to supress Confederate criminals while the Confederate authorities cared so little for South Carolina that they let the Union army run amok. More evidence for the worthlessness of the Confederate cause and more evidence that the rebs in power cared more their wealth that for their people they were supposed to protect.