On February 17, 1865, Union forces under Major General William T. Sherman entered Columbia, South Carolina. The city was in chaos, with citizens in the streets and cotton flakes blowing through the air like snow.
As Sherman rode into the conquered state capital, he was approached by a group of escaped Union prisoners of war. One of the bedraggled men handed Sherman a piece of paper.
Sherman, as was his habit, tucked the paper into his pocket without reading it. He planned to sort through such documents later, once he had settled at his headquarters.
Later that day, Sherman emptied his pockets and began reviewing the papers he had collected. One of them turned out to be the lyrics to a song written by another prisoner of war held in Columbia.
That man was Adjutant Samuel Hawkins Marshall Byers of the Fifth Iowa Infantry. Byers lived from 1838 to 1933.
What followed was an act of civility on Sherman’s part that changed Byers’s life for the better. Sherman later wrote about the encounter in his 1875 memoir.
Sherman described entering the city after his engineers built a pontoon bridge. He rode with his staff and several generals, including Oliver O. Howard, John A. Logan, and Charles R. Woods.
In the Market Square, Sherman found a large crowd of white and Black residents. The mayor of Columbia, Dr. Thomas Jefferson Goodwin, was there, anxious to protect the interests of the citizens.
Sherman assured the mayor that the Union forces did not intend to stay long and had no purpose to injure private citizens or private property.
It was then that the escaped prisoners pushed through the crowd to reach him. They explained they were Union officers who had escaped from the rebel prison.
Sherman told them to report to General Howard, who would provide for their safety. One of the men handed him a paper and asked him to read it at his leisure.
Sherman put the paper in his breast pocket and continued with the day’s business. He later rode through the city, noting burned buildings and piles of cotton and corn.
He eventually settled at the house of Blandon Duncan, a citizen of Louisville who had fled with Confederate cavalry. Sherman used the home as his headquarters.
Around 2 p.m., Sherman went through his pockets to read the notes and memoranda he had received during the day. He found the paper from the escaped prisoner.
It was the song "Sherman’s March to the Sea," composed by Adjutant Byers while he was a prisoner in the asylum at Columbia. A fellow prisoner had written it out beautifully.
Sherman was impressed. He sent for Byers, attached him to his staff, and provided him with a horse and equipment.
Sherman took Byers as far as Fayetteville, North Carolina, where Byers was sent to Washington as a bearer of dispatches.
By the time Sherman published his memoir, Byers was serving as the United States consul at Zurich, Switzerland. Sherman noted that he had since been Byers’s guest there.
Sherman included the full lyrics of the song in his memoir. Byers said an excellent glee club among the prisoners in Columbia used to sing it well, often with an audience of rebel ladies.
The song tells of the army’s march through Georgia, from the mountains to the sea. It celebrates Sherman’s leadership and the Union banner.
One verse reads: "Then cheer upon cheer for bold Sherman went up from each valley and glen, and the bugles re-echoed the music that came from the lips of the men."
Another describes the army’s arrival: "Then sang we the song of our chieftain that echoed over river and lee, and the stars in our banner shone brighter when Sherman camped down by the sea."
The anecdote shows how a simple act of kindness from Sherman lifted Byers from prisoner of war to a member of his staff and later to a diplomatic post.
The song remains a record of the march and the men who endured it, preserved in Sherman’s own account of the war.