Both the North and South allowed children to enlist in their armies and fight in civil war battles, although Union records best document this fact. There were at least 300 Northern soldiers who were 13 years old or younger, and 25 who were less than 10 years old. The youngest Medal of Honor winner, drummer boy Willie Johnston of the 3rd Vermont, was 12 during the action for which he was decorated. There were 330 Union soldiers listed as age 14; 773 were age 15; 2,758 were 16; 6,425 were recorded as being 17, although many more youngsters entered service after lying about their ages. On March 3, 1864, the U.S. Congress prohibited youngsters under age 16, with or without consent, from enlisting in the Union military. Some boys are reported to have had that number written on a piece of paper in their shoe so that they could truthfully swear that they were "over" 16.

Confederate soldier-poet Sidney Lanier described the Rebel Yell as "a single long cry as from the leader of a pack of hounds who has found the game ... a dry harsh quality that conveys an uncompromising hostility ... the irresistible outflow of some fierce soul immeasurably enraged, tinged with a jubilant tone, as if in anticipation of a speedy triumph and a satisfying revenge ... a howl, a hoarse baffle-cry, a cheer, and a congratulation, all in one." Union soldier-author Ambrose Bierce said, "It was the ugliest sound that any mortal ever heard." Anyone who ever heard it never forgot it~ but no one has heard it since 1865 so no one today truiv knows what the Yell sounds like. "A mingling of Indian whoop and wolf-howl" is one of the many ways veterans have described it. Phonetic attempts at pronunciation have given it various sounds, including a "yip-yip-yip" sound and a "woh-who-ey" sound. Northern soldiers remembered it as eerie and bloodcurdling, and as a shriek, a "wildcat screech," or a "banshee squall." "There is nothing like it on this side of the infernal region," remembered one. "The peculiar corkscrew sensation that it sends down your backbone under these circumstances can never be told." To Gen. Stonewall Jackson the Rebel Yell was "the sweetest music I ever heard," and to the soldiers in the Rebel armies it was much more than a battle cry. It was "a maniacal maelstrom of sound; that penetrating, rasping, shrieking, bloodcurdling noise that could be heard for miles on earth and whose volumes reached the heavens." Like the roar of a great beast, it foretold the fierce power of a Southern army on the attack. But the "awe-inspiring sound" could also unite the men in a strangely patriotic way, as the Yell began at one end d a Southern army and swept in great loud waves up and down the line. Remembered one participant, "Me effect was beyond expression. It seemed to fill every heart with new life, to inspire every nerve with might never known before." Fascinating Fact: The demonic, fiendish Rebel Yell, one Union soldier said, was "a yell the devil ought to copyright." An old Rebel veteran, when asked to duplicate it, said the true Yell could be sounded only at a dead run during the excitement of battle.

Throughout his political career, President Abraham Lincoln had opposed slavery as a moral wrong. but he knew slavery was sanctioned by the Constitution and he respected the law. besides, the border states that remained in the Union were slave states, and the war effort could little afford to repay their loyalty with the freeing of their slaves. Several of Lincoln's military commanders had attempted to emancipate the slaves in their districts, but each time Lincoln countermanded the orders. Utilizing the broad range of powers the Constitution gives presidents during national emergencies, Lincoln was able to issue the Emancipation Proclamation as a measure to help the North win the war. Slavery was a asset to the South's war effort in that it provided a readily available labor force for the Confederate armies and allowed production to continue on the homefront while the men fought the battles. Telling the slaves that they were free Could possibly incite them to rebel against their masters, thus opening a new front in the prosecution of the war. Also, once Lincoln took this major step, any hopes the Confederate states may have had of foreign intervention on their side were immediately dashed. Once slavery became a central issue in the war, England and France could no longer contemplate aiding the Confederacy. Still, Lincoln could not bring himself to lose the good faith of slave owners in the loyal states of Kentucky, Delaware, Maryland, and Missouri; therefore, he did not free their slaves. Nor did he free any slaves in New Orleans, northern Virginia, and much of Tennessee, the South Carolina coast, and other areas of the Southern states already under federal control. Lincoln's emancipation proclamation freed only the slaves in rebellious areas of the country areas administered by the confederate government where, ironically, federal government had no control.

"Behind us lay Atlanta, smoldering and in ruins, the black smoke hanging like a pull over the ruined city," wrote Gen. William T. Sherman on the day he left Atlanta. For 10 weeks his army had been resting and refitting in the Georgia city, while the Rebel army, from whom he had captured it, went marching off to Tennessee. It had taken much of that time for Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to agree to let Sherman march from Atlanta to Savannah. " If you can whip Lee and I can march to the Atlantic, I think Uncle Abe will give us 20 days' leave of absence to see the young folks," he joked to Grant. Sherman's intentions for Georgia however, were no joke: " the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people will cripple their military resources... I can make this march, and make Georgia howl!" He was starting a campaign, not against any military force but against civilians, old men, women, and children who could not fight, but who had supported the rebellion with their resources and kinsmen. On Nov. 15, 1864 the 62,000-man Union army started its famous march. Its men in excellent shape and high sprits and were traveling light. The wagons contained plenty of ammunition and 65 cannon, but not much in way of food for forage for the horses. The Georgia farms and towns were to be their commissary and quartermaster. The men met only light opposition from a few scattered Rebel cavalry units and Georgia militia as they streamed through the countryside in two columns- one column moving toward Augusta, the other toward Macon. As they traveled, Sherman's men took whatever they wanted and destroyed everything else in a swath that sometimes reached a width of 60 miles. But the apparent destinations of the federal columns were feints to throw off Rebel opposition. On November 22, the two columns converged and descended on Milledgeville, the state capital. Fascinating Fact: "Old gray haired and weakly looking men and little boys, not over 15 years old, lay dead or writhing in pain. I hope we never have to shoot at such men again. They knew nothing about fighting, and I think their officers knew as little," wrote a Union officer about the Georgia militia. And to think the Yankee's call Sherman a hero.

The truth is," wrote Union Gen. William T. Sherman shortly before leaving Savannah, "the whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance upon South Carolina. I almost tremble at her fate, but feel she deserves all that seems in store for her." The destruction Sherman's army had caused on its way to Savannah had surely made Georgia howl, but it was mild compared with what detested South Carolina was to face. Here the war had started, and now the first secessionists were to get retribution. One of his soldiers wrote home, "If we don't purify South Carolina, it will be because we can't get a fight." After leaving Savannah on February 5, 1865, Sherman's 60,000 men took a direct fine toward Columbia, the capital. Able South Carolina men had long since left for the Confederate armies in distant states, and the Union soldiers faced only token resistance from any organized Rebel troops. Sherman's men foraged liberally upon the native population, and everywhere left little more than clusters of black chimneys to mark the sites of where towns had been. One soldier joked that the name of the town of Barnwell should now be changed to Burnwell. Still, the march was grand and spectacular. By the night of February 15, the first of the Union soldiers had reached the Congaree River across from Columbia. The next day they sighted their cannon on the State House across the river and fired shells into the heart of the city. Other members of their forces laid pontoon bridges and crossed the river. On the morning of February 17, the advancing blue horde was met by the mayor of Columbia, who surrendered the city and was in turn assured by Sherman that the city and its inhabitants would not be harmed. Even so, as the blue soldiers marched into Columbia, some could be heard to sing, "Hail, Columbia, happy land. If you don't burn, I'll be damned."

0n February 17, 1865, Union Gen. William T. Sherman and his army marched into Columbia, the capital of South Carolina. The mayor had surrendered the city to him that morning. The story of what happened next can best be told by the entries for that night in the diary of local 17-year-old Emma LeConte:"Gen. Sherman has assured the Mayor, 'that he and all the citizens may sleep as securely and quietly tonight as if under Confederate rule. Private property shall be carefully respected.... At about seven o'clock I was standing on the back piazza in the third story. On one side the sky was illuminated by the burning of Gen. Hampton's residence a few miles off in the country, on the other side by some blazing buildings near the river. Sumter Street was brightly lighted by a burning house so near our piazza that we could feel the heat. By the red glare we could watch the wretches walking-generally staggering-back and forth from the camp to the town-shouting-hurrahing--cursing South Carolina swearing-blaspheming-singing ribald songs and using such obscene language that we were forced to go indoors. The fire on Main Street was now raging, and we anxiously watched its progress from the upper front windows...."The wind blew a fearful gale, waffling the flames from house to house with frightful rapidity. By midnight the whole town (except the outskirts) was wrapped in one huge blaze.... Jane came in to say that Aunt Josie's house was in flames-then we all went to the front door-My God! what a scene! It was about four o'clock and the State House was one grand conflagration. ... Such a scene as this with the drunken fiendish soldiery in their dark uniforms, infuriated, cursing, screaming, exulting in their work, came nearer the material ideal of hell than anything I ever expect to see again." Fascinating Fact: An entry for February 23 reveals the defiant nature of this young Rebel: "We have lost everything, but if all this-negroes-property-all could be given back a hundredfold I would not he willing to go back to them. I would rather endure any poverty than five under Yankee rule.... Yankees-that word in my mind is a synonym for all that is mean, despicable and abhorrent."

South Carolina was devastated and destitute from the Civil War, and its revival, as in other defeated states, would be long and difficult. Its cities were in ruins, and private and public funds were wiped out by the collapse of the Confederate monetary and credit systems. Banks closed, commerce was at a standstill, and much of the landscape "looked for miles like a broad black streak of ruin and desolation-fences all gone; lonesome smokestacks, surrounded by dark heaps of ashes and cinders, marking the spots where human habitations had stood."
Freed blacks faced many new challenges, as 97 percent of them were illiterate and few owned anything of value, had ever been in a store, or knew anything about money. Some stayed on isolated coastal islands where their family had lived, and would continue to five, for many generations. Others set out in search of lost family members, or flocked to the cities, where the Freedmen's Bureau supplied them with food. After the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress installed military rule and a puppet government in 1867, some blacks found themselves members of the state legislature. There, they were controlled by the white carpetbaggers and scalawags who systematically looted the public treasury. Taxable property values had plummeted from $490 million in 1860 to $184 million in 1870, yet the Republican government passed laws that brought in tax revenue at five times the 1860 level. Whites in South Carolina, almost all of V V whom were Democrats, were powerless to stop military occupation. "There are still five years more of good stealing in South Carolina," said carpetbagger "Honest" John Patterson. A backlash to black rule, the Ku Klux Klan arose as a powerful and mysterious vigilante force that strove to regain white supremacy.
Fascinating Fact: The worst of all Reconstruction scalawags may have been South Carolina Gov. Franklin J. Moses Jr. He was a prewar fire-eater who had raised the Confederate flag over Fort Sumter, but turned Republican at the Rebel defeat and then became rich as a notoriously corrupt governor.

When Robert E. Lee married Mary Anne Randolph Custis in 1831, they began to build 30 years of memories at her home, Arlington House. The tremendous Greek Revival mansion, 140 feet long and 40 feet wide, was built in 1802 by Mary's father, George Washington Parke Custis, the adopted son of the first U.S. President, George Washington. Atop a hill overlooking Washington, D.C., the Doric columns of Arlington House were so large that they could be seen from across the Potomac River. In 1858 and part of 1859 Lee took more than a year's leave from the U.S. Army and used some of his salary to make much-needed repairs to the homestead to make it a productive farm. At the outbreak of the Civil War when Lee resigned from the U.S. Army, he no doubt knew he would be losing the family home because the house was so close to Washington. On Christmas Day, 1861, Lee wrote to one of his daughters: "Your old home, if not destroyed by our enemies, has been so desecrated that I cannot bear to think of it. I should have preferred it to have been wiped from the earth ... rather than have been degraded by the presence of those who revel in the ill they do for their own selfish purposes." Union soldiers and their government had stripped the home and used it as a headquarters with troops camped all over the grounds. Arlington was "sold" due to delinquent taxes to the U.S. Government on January 11, 1864, for a "bookkeeping" bid of $26,860. The government had passed a law requiting the owners of property to pay taxes in person, so when the Lees' cousin tried to pay the taxes, the money was refused. Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Miegs chose Arlington in 1864 as a new military cemetery. He held ' Lee responsible for the Union dead and wanted to bury them at Lee's doorstep. Arlington House was later restored and refurnished and became the Robert E. Lee Memorial. The grounds now encompass more than 500 acres, where soldiers from most of the wars fought by the United States are buried honorably. Fascinating Fact: George Washington Custis Lee, Lee's eldest son and the heir to Arlington, took the matter to court, where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the government to be a trespasser. In 1883 Custis Lee received $150,000 for Arlington's title.