1865 American Civil War battle
The capture of Columbia occurred February 17–18, 1865, during the Carolinas Campaign of the American Civil War. The state capital of Columbia, South Carolina, was captured by Union forces under Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman. Much of the city was burned, although it is not clear which side caused the fires.
After Gen. Sherman's March to the Sea captured Savannah, Georgia, he turned his forces north and marched into the Carolinas. Splitting his forces to deceive the Confederates, Sherman maneuvered towards Columbia in early February 1865. Columbia was of considerable strategic importance: it was a center of manufacturing, a rail hub, a state capital, and a symbolic origin point of the secession movement. Poor planning and leadership on the part of the Confederates meant that Columbia was underdefended. Confederate forces, under P. G. T. Beauregard, had been spread thin rather than concentrated to take Sherman in field combat. No preparations had been made for the evacuation of the city's citizens, army materiel, or administrative functions (including the Confederate treasury's printing presses). 
When it became apparent in mid February that the full might of the Union army was bearing down on Columbia, the city erupted into panic. Hasty last minute attempts were made to evacuate the city's military supplies, but almost none were salvaged. The city's considerable cotton reserves were ordered taken into the streets to be burned so that they could not fall into the hands of the enemy. Retreating and demoralized Confederate elements began to stream into the city, precipitating riots. The city fell into disorder, and martial law was declared on the 16th. Realizing the city was lost, Confederate forces withdrew from the city overnight. Fires broke out in the street cotton during the night, due either to drunk Confederates, Union shelling, or both. 
The Union Army entered the city on the morning of the 17th. Union forces set about garrisoning the city with a provost guard, and extinguishing numerous fires that were already burning. Despite efforts by Union commanders, drunkenness began to spread through the army. Fires also continued to burn throughout the city; at least nine separate groups of fires were extinguished during the day. As evening approached, the situation was becoming dire. A new garrison was called into the city, but when it entered around 8 pm, they found a new fire had started. This final fire was the most destructive. Driven by high winds, it could not be extinguished even by the thousands of troops in the provost guard. Undisciplined Union soldiers complicated firefighting efforts, as rogue elements of the army were generally looting the city, and some were setting fires. Finally, winds died down around 2 am on the 18th, and the Union army was able to extinguish the fire. Further garrison elements were also called into the city, which restored order by 5 am.
A third of the city's buildings were destroyed in the various fires. The responsibility for the fires has been a topic of historical, and popular, debate. The idea that Gen. Sherman ordered the burning of Columbia has persisted as part of the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. But modern historians have concluded that no one cause led to the burning of Columbia, and that Sherman did not order the burning. Rather, the chaotic atmosphere in the city on the occasion of its fall led to the ideal conditions for a fire to start and spread.
Background.
Columbia in 1865.
Columbia was small for a capital town; only 8,052 residents, some 3,500 whom were slaves, had been counted in the 1860 census. Charleston, South Carolina, by comparison had 40,522 residents in 1860. The aging wooden statehouse of South Carolina had been recently moved and was in the process of being replaced by a granite one. But it lay unfinished, much like the Capitol dome in Washington, D.C., at the time. 
The Columbia economy was based around the cotton trade, and many warehouses were dedicated to its storage. The South had overproduced cotton for years leading up to the war. Combined with the Union blockade of the South, Columbian warehouses, and even basements and outbuildings of unrelated properties, were packed full of cotton. A cotton fire in January 1864 had burned down several warehouses, destroying some $3.4 million worth of property and cotton (). Another fire followed in June 1864, burning even more cotton than the January fire had.
The city was of considerable importance to the Confederacy. Columbia was the site of the first Southern secession convention, which assembled in the First Baptist Church on December 17, 1860. Secession may well have been declared in Columbia, were it not for a smallpox outbreak which moved the convention partway through to Charleston, where South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union on December 20. A considerable military infrastructure sprung up in Columbia. The state arsenal was located in Columbia, along with the state military academy. The grounds of the University of South Carolina were converted into a military hospital, since its role as an educational institution had been made moot after its entire student body volunteered for the Confederate Army. In 1863, the city became one of the only domestic sources of medical supplies for the Confederacy, under Dr. Joseph LeConte. The city's most important industrial contribution was the Palmetto Iron Works, which in concert with a nearby gunpowder factory, manufactured shells, bullets, and cannons. The Confederate Army sock factory was located in Columbia, which worked together with 500 local women who finished the rough socks. The Confederate treasury's printing presses were relocated to Columbia in 1862, which was an ever more important enterprise as inflation forced the printing of $1.5 billion in currency, three times as much as the Union printed. The city's strategic importance was made even more clear by being a junction of numerous railroads. By 1865, it was also the Confederacy's last breadbasket. All of these factors combined to make it the obvious next target for General William T. Sherman after his successful March to the Sea.
Military.
Following the fall of Savannah, Georgia, at the end of his March to the Sea, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman turned his combined armies northward to unite with Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia and to cut General Robert E. Lee's supply lines to the Deep South. He planned to march through South Carolina to Columbia, then capture and destroy the Confederate arsenal at Fayetteville, North Carolina, before uniting with the XXIII Corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. John Schofield, at Goldsboro, North Carolina. To confuse the Confederates, he sent his left wing westward towards Augusta and his right wing eastward towards Charleston.
Confederate forces in South Carolina were part of the Department of the West, under the command of General P.G.T. Beauregard. He attempted to defend both Augusta and Charleston and divided his available forces between the two cities to defend them as long as possible. He hoped that doing so would give the Confederacy an advantage during negotiations at the Hampton Roads peace conference; he also thought that he could reconcentrate his forces if Sherman changed course for Columbia.
Sherman sought to maximize his speed and deception as he entered South Carolina. He stripped the army down to its barebones, leaving behind most of its baggage, opting to go without supply lines and forage on the march. He then split his army into two prongs, making one appear to go for Charleston, and the other for Augusta, Georgia. The Confederates fell for the ruse, split their forces, and were resoundingly defeated by Sherman's extremely mobile army. Most importantly, the Confederates had left Columbia mostly unprotected since they believed that Sherman's army was not heading for it. But Columbian citizens saw the impending threat, and organized civilian petitions for defense starting in December 1864. Repeated attempts by Columbian citizens to arrange for Confederate reinforcements failed; by January 1865, the Confederate government believed that Charleston (and by extension Columbia) could not be held and was unworthy of reinforcement. A plea by Governor Andrew Gordon Magrath to General Robert E. Lee was only slightly more successful, leading Lee to dispatch a token force of 2,000 troops to bolster the 30,000 already in South Carolina. But the nature of the threat to Columbia remained mostly unconsidered as late as February 14th. Only on February 10 was the first sign of the danger apparent, when Dr. LeConte received orders to pack up the Confederate medical/chemical facilities and ship them to Richmond. But even Dr. LeConte believed the city to be safe, having heard that only 300 troops threatened the city, compared to its 5,000 defenders.
The defense of Columbia was made mostly ineffectual by the poor decisions of General P. G. T. Beauregard, who further split his forces trying to counter Sherman, rather than keeping his forces together. Historian Marion Lucas assesses that Beauregard failed to learn from Sherman's March to the Sea. Had he learned, Lucas argues that Beauregard would have realized that Sherman would again split his forces, and that the best counter would have been to keep Confederate forces united and attack Sherman's weak flanks. Lucas also argues that the Confederate forces had the advantage despite being outnumbered two-to-one: they had considerable stores of food and ammunition, compared to Sherman's foraging troops. Further, Sherman was being slowed by torrential winter rains and impassable roads. But Lucas ultimately argues that Beauregard had already succumbed to defeatism, and that the spirit had infected the troops. Beauregard sent a dejected message to Lee on February 15, indicating that he would be withdrawing towards North Carolina, implicitly meaning that Columbia was to be abandoned.
Prelude to capture.
Skirmishing begins.
On February 15, 1865, a mere 15 days after entering the Carolinas, Sherman's army had advanced to within four miles of Columbia. Skirmishes broke out repeatedly. Confederate forces shelled Union troops in their sleep on the night of February 15th, after Union forces gave away their positions by lighting campfires. Sherman was angered by the killing of his sleeping troops, and contemplated retaliation, but decided against it. The last Confederate troops pulled back across the Saluda and Congaree rivers on February 16, burning the bridges across the rivers, disobeying Beauregard's orders. Confederate sharpshooters harassed Union troops from across the Congaree; Union troops quickly shelled the sharpshooters into silence. At this point, it still appeared that the city would not be taken without a fight, and Sherman made plans for its capture. He issued Special Field Order No. 26, which was nearly identical in its terms to the order issued for the capture of Savannah a couple of months prior:General Howard will cross the Saluda and Broad rivers as near their mouths as possible, occupy Columbia, destroy the public buildings, railroad property, manufacturing and machine shops, but will spare libraries and asylums and private dwellings.
Evacuation of Columbia.
Little consideration had been made by Confederate authorities for a potential evacuation. Thus, by February 14th, when it was finally apparent that the full might of the Union Army was bearing down on Columbia, the city descended into panic. Citizens and government officials competed for space on outgoing railroad trains, with no system for priority. The town fell into a further state of chaos as retreating Confederate troops streamed into the city. Martial law was declared on the 16th as rioting began to take hold. The Confederates did have some successes in evacuation. They managed to get out the treasury presses, and the treasury employees with all their baggage (save for the women's hoop skirts) aboard a train. Further, the Union prisoners of war had been successfully evacuated on February 12, in perhaps the only act of preplanning in the evacuation, though planning for proper provisions had not been arranged. Otherwise, the evacuation of Confederate property was a disaster. The commander of the Palmetto Armory desperately sought permission to prioritize the Armory's irreplaceable stock machines, but became bogged down in Confederate inefficiency and communication issues; the machines just barely escaped Columbia. The rest of the Armory was not so lucky, it was rendered "de facto" captured on the 16th as Union artillery came within range. 
Confederate Major N. R. Chambliss arrived in the city on February 14 with the intent of evacuating the considerable military stores. Though initially he tarried in evacuating supplies, Chambliss proved to be the most dedicated