Charleston: 150 Years After The Great Fire

Monday marked the 150^th anniversary of the “Great Fire” of Charleston in 1861. The fire caused as much damage to our genteel city as the Civil War itself—if not more. The fire started late on the night of December 11, 1861, and burned a path through the heart of the city until 5 a.m. on December 12. By the time the fire ended it had destroyed more than a third of the city.

No one ever knew for sure how the fire started. One account has the fire starting from a cooking fire lit by slaves for their master, who had fled before the Union soldiers advancing in the coastal islands. Mysterious fires were often blamed on slaves during the Civil War era, but the Great Fire of 1861 was believed to have started from that cooking fire at Russell and Company’s Sash and Blind factory on Hasell Street. The fire spread quickly, fueled by a windy Nor’easter and an endless supply of wooden buildings—and because most of the city’s firemen had left to join the army. Many people were able to save some of their belongings, but few could stop the fire from destroying their homes.

It took weeks to tally the city’s losses, but in the end the burned area covered 540 acres and over 500 hundred buildings. Locals estimated the damages at the time to be $7 million dollars.

With the city in shambles, the people of Charleston turned out to help. Business was suspended and planters sent produce into town for the needy. “Soup houses” were opened to feed those left homeless and relief committees were established to house the homeless and to raise money for the victims. Even the Georgia legislature sent money.

For the remainder of the Civil War Charleston lay in ruins. The effects of the fire were long lasting and rebuilding was slow in the decades following the Civil War. Damages caused by the fire often came to be associated with damages from the war and photographs of the burned city were often misrepresented as damage caused by Union guns. In reality, however, the Great Fire of 1861 did more damage to our city in one night than the “Lincolnites” could have ever hoped for.