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The league supplied literature for school and club debates and distributed it at many county fairs. On October 17 a State convention was held in Columbia. Mrs. Coleman and Dr. Gannt resigned; Mrs. Harriet P. Lynch, Cheraw, was elected president and Mrs. W. C. Cathcart of Columbia was appointed legislative chairman.
There I received a message from General Howard, who, reported that he was already in Cheraw with the Seventeenth Corps, and that the Fifteenth was near at hand. General Hardee had retreated eastward across the Pedee, burning the bridge.
After the completion of the destruction of public property about Columbia, Sherman proceeded on his march and reached Cheraw without any special opposition and without incident to relate. The railroads, of course, were thoroughly destroyed on the way. Sherman remained a day or two at Cheraw; and, finally, on the 6th of March crossed his troops over the Pedee and advanced straight for Fayetteville.
Though we became as impatient as those ancient sentinels who for ten long years stood upon the Grecian hills to catch the first glimpse of the flames of burning Troy, Sherman came not. We afterwards learned that two expeditions were sent down towards us from Cheraw, but they met with unexpected resistance, and were turned back.
My army is as united and cheerful as ever, and as full of confidence in itself and its leaders. It is utterly impossible for me to enumerate what we have done, but I inclose a slip just handed me, which is but partial. At Columbia and Cheraw we destroyed nearly all the gunpowder and cartridges which the Confederacy had in this part of the country.
We at length discovered that Sherman had reached Branchville, and was singing around toward Columbia, and other important points to the north; that Charleston was being evacuated, and its garrison, munitions and stores were being removed to Cheraw, which the Rebel Generals intended to make their new base.
He had already ordered his pontoon-bridge to be laid across the Pedee, there a large, deep, navigable stream, and Mower's division was already across, skirmishing with the enemy about two miles out. Cheraw was found to be full of stores which had been sent up from Charleston prior to its evacuation, and which could not be removed.
In 1846 a prisoner under arrest at Cheraw, South Carolina, professed to reveal a new conspiracy for slave stealing with ramifications from Virginia to Texas; but the details appear not to have been published. Certain hostile critics of slavery asserted that in one district or another masters made reckonings favorable to such driving of slaves at their work as would bring premature death.
"We, the Grand Jurors of and for the district of Cheraw, do present the INEFFICACY of the present punishment for killing negroes, as a great defect in the legal system of this state: and we do earnestly recommend to the attention of the legislature, that clause of the negro act, which confines the penalty for killing slaves to fine and imprisonment only: in full confidence, that they will provide some other more effectual measures to prevent the FREQUENCY of crimes of this nature."
In our route we had captured Columbia, Cheraw, and Fayetteville, important cities and depots of supplies, had compelled the evacuation of Charleston City and Harbor, had utterly broken up all the railroads of South Carolina, and had consumed a vast amount of food and forage, essential to the enemy for the support of his own armies.
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