A City Laid Waste

"A graphic account of the horrors, the brutality and sometimes wanton destruction of warfare, particularly of civil war, where sectional enmities and jealousies tend to eclipse humane instincts, Aiken's book is a worthy contribution to the body of studies that continues to emerge on the literary contributions of William Gilmore Simms."—Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier

"A shrewd viewer of the war scene in Columbia, famed Southern writer William Gilmore Simms published stinging, courageous exposés of the doings of the Northern forces, even when threatened with arrest. The restoration of his candid firsthand accounts of the destruction wrought by Sherman's forces against the South Carolina capitol and its inhabitants is a great service to all who study and appreciate Southern history and literature. David Aiken's detailed introduction to A City Laid Waste offers us the context for better understanding the historical and current significance of these reports of invasion, terror, and mass destruction by U.S. troops during wartime."—James Everett Kibler, author of Our Fathers' Fields and founding editor of the Simms Review

"William Gilmore Simms, literary lion of the old South and resident of Columbia, South Carolina, when William T. Sherman's troops arrived, wrote about the destruction of an elegant city before its ashes or his passions had cooled. For Simms, the city suffered a 'demonic saturnalia' of wicked and drunken troops, monsters under a banner of 'streaks and spangles.' His newspaper accounts, restored to print here for the first time since their original publication, also inaugurated an as yet unresolved debate about responsibility for the burning of Columbia."—John Y. Simon, executive director of the Ulysses S. Grant Association and professor of history at Southern Illinois University Carbondale