Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 87, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1911 — AROUND THE CAMP FIRE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

AROUND THE CAMP FIRE

origilm of fire at Columbia! Corporal William Q. Baugh, Sr., Telia of Conflagration, But Sheds No New Light. When I read in The National Tribune the question. “Who Did Start the Fire?" (at Columbia), I feel that it isi my turn to write. I have Comrade* Byers’s (Fifth Iowa) “Diary of a Soldier Under Grant and Sherman,” published by the National Tribune soma time ago, before me. At this day many events that have escaped our memory tends to revive that spirit of patriotism that entered into our lives when we were called to defend our country’s unity, and the feeling is just as strong now in our later years as it was then. How much good the inch dents written by our comrades at this late day do our old souls cannot be told. They revive us to a younger life, and make us better G. A. R. comrades and better citizens, writes Corporal William G. Baugh, Sr., Company I, Seventieth Ohio, in The National Tribune. Comrade Byers says that General Sherman left with his army the day after the fire. That is not altogether correct. I know that our company (I, Seventy-sixth Ohio) did not leave for several dayß. I speak for only my company. I do not know at this day how many others remained in the city. We of the First Brigade, First Division, Fifteenth Corps, entered the city early in the afternoon. Ido not claim we were the first; we got there, all the same, and helped to t>ut out the fire. I remember waiting upon the other side of the river while our batteries were shelling the city, and could see the state house plainly before we crossed. We entered the city before night. We had the honor of being placed at different buildings, doing guard duty, as so many of onr soldiers were going into the stores before the fire reached them, taking whatever they wanted, as the citizens seemed to have deserted everything. I was guard at a bank, and during the night was right in the midst bf the fire. We succeeded- in getting an old hand engine on a street, but we were unable to use the hose and we abandoned it I still have a scar on my hand from a cut by glass in the door, which fell out when I closed it. After the building had burned we hunted among the ruins in the cellar for what we could find. I got several chunks of melted silverware as large as two fists. I carried it for some time, but it became heavy, and I threw it away to make room for hardtack. I got some other pieces of silverware

that did not melt. 1 know of a certain regimental officer who carried In the headquarters wagon silver plate that was gotten from the same build- ‘ ing, and it was sent to his home. We were camped In ihe yard at a private house. There were no men about, only two women, and they were very tbaaktul lor the protection we gave, as so many soldiers became drunk and disorderly. I well remember the night of the burning. Towards morning a most weird and solemn Bight presented itself—the Catholic sisters tramping alone in charge of many orphans driven from their home by the fire. After the fire we moved to another part of the city, and again camped in the yard of a private house. We got feather beds out of the houses and used them. We also took a piano into the yard and played upon it foi; awhile; then broke it up to burn for cooking. Most of those houses were deserted by their owners, and, of course, what was there belonged to us. It will never be known how many of our soldiers were burned with the buildings during the fire. I saw one body, all burned to cinders. I knew it was a soldier, for beside the trunk was the barrel of his cun. Where the fire started, or when, or by whom, is a question that no one can answer correctly. We all have our surmises. But 1 guess the city did not get any more than she was entitled to.

“I Was on Guard at the Bank.”