On the first of February Sherman began his march. Carefully spreading reports that Charleston on the one hand or Augusta on the other was his destination, he moved swiftly upon Columbia, the capital city of South Carolina. It was Sherman's plan in this northward march to keep the sea always at his back. He arranged for the fleet to coöperate with him from beginning to end, to bring supplies to the several points along the coast that were held by the Federals and to preserve to him at those points secure places of refuge to which he might retreat in the event of his encountering disaster in the field. His tactics were precisely those adopted by Cornwallis in his contest with Greene in 1780, but with the modern improvement of a navy driven by steam and therefore far more certain and precise in its operations than that which supported Cornwallis could be. Sherman entered the city of Columbia on the seventeenth of February. Thus far he had encountered no opposition except such as the alert Confederate cavalry under Wade Hampton could offer. For as yet the uncertainty as to whither Sherman planned to go compelled Johnston to keep his own forces scattered over a line that stretched all the way from Augusta to Charleston. It was in South Carolina, of which Columbia is the capital, that secession had been born. It was here that South Carolina had proclaimed her withdrawal from the Union and her independent sovereignty. It was here that the war which had cost so much of life and treasure and sacrifice and suffering had been born. There was very naturally, among the now victorious men of Sherman's command, a specially vengeful feeling toward South Carolina and still more against its capital city. The cotton stored in that city was brought out and piled in the middle of the broad streets. Presently it was fired by some agency. The fire spread to the buildings of the town, and the greater part of the beautiful city was burned. The Confederates have always insisted that Columbia was wantonly burned by General Sherman's order. General Sherman always denied the charge. The controversy over that point in newspapers, pamphlets and books, has filled space enough in print to constitute a library. It would quite uselessly encumber these pages to present here, even in outline, the hopelessly conflicting testimony that has been given on either side. All of that testimony is accessible to every reader who cares to follow it in controversial publications, and it seems to lead to no safely definite conclusion.