Qualla: Columbia, South Carolina

Columbia, South Carolina: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dr. Blazer, CC BY-SA 4.0. The fire began the night of February 17, 1865, and by morning much of Columbia was charcoal. Sherman's army had marched in that afternoon after Confederate cavalry abandoned the city; whether the blaze was set by Union troops, by retreating Confederates burning cotton bales in the streets, or by some combination of soldiers, escaped Union prisoners, and a hard wind, was argued at the time and is argued still. What is not argued is what happened in the days around the fire: enslaved Black Carolinians from the surrounding plantations walked into Columbia in numbers nobody had ever counted, and they kept walking. They did not wait for emancipation to be granted. They claimed it. The city that rebuilt itself out of the ash spent the next century pretending the second event mattered less than the first, but both of them are how modern Columbia came to exist.

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Image: Dr. Blazer | CC BY-SA 4.0

Columbia, South Carolina: A Capital by Compromise

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dr. Blazer, CC BY-SA 4.0. South Carolina founded Columbia in 1786 as a compromise capital, planted at the geographic center of the state to settle a long argument between the Lowcountry rice planters around Charleston and the upcountry yeoman farmers around the Saluda. A grid was laid out at the Fall Line...

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Image: Dr. Blazer | CC BY-SA 4.0

Columbia, South Carolina: February 17, 1865

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Akhenaton06, CC BY 3.0. When General William Tecumseh Sherman's army arrived at the Congaree in February 1865 after burning a path through Georgia, the surrender of Columbia was negotiated by the mayor, Confederate troops withdrew to the north, and Union soldiers entered the city. By that night the down...

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Image: Akhenaton06 | CC BY 3.0

Columbia, South Carolina: Rebuilding, and What Was Built

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DXR, CC BY-SA 4.0. Reconstruction gave Columbia, briefly, an interracial state government - the first in South Carolina's history, with Black legislators outnumbering white ones in the lower house. That government founded schools, including ones that would educate Black children for the first time ...

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Image: DXR | CC BY-SA 4.0

Columbia, South Carolina: Soda City Now

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dr. Blazer, CC BY-SA 4.0. Modern Columbia calls itself Soda City after the old soda-fountain abbreviation Cola, and it is a city of around 144,000 with roughly 750,000 more in the surrounding metropolitan area. Fort Jackson, just east of town, is the US Army's largest initial entry training installation -...

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Image: Dr. Blazer | CC BY-SA 4.0