"Mrs Bartow drove with me to our house at Mulberry. On one side of the house every window was broken, every bell torn down, every piece of furniture destroyed, every door smashed in. The other side intact.
Maria Whitaker and her mother, who had been left in charge, explained this odd state of things.
'They were busy as beavers. They were working like regular carpenters, destroying everything, when the general came in. He said it was a shame, and he stopped them. Said it was a sin to destroy a fine old house like that whose owner was over ninety years old. He would not have done it for the world. It was wanton mischief.' He told Maria soldiers at such times were so excited, so wild and unruly.
They carried off sacks of our books. Unfortunately there were a pile of empty sacks lying in the garret. Our books, our papers, our letters, were strewed along the Charleston road. Somebody said they found some of them as far away as Vance's Ferry.
This was Potter's raid.* Sherman took only our horses. Potter's raid, which was after Johnston's surrender, ruined us finally, burning our mills and gins and a hundred bales of cotton. Indeed nothing is left now but the bare land and debts made for the support of these hundreds of negroes during the war."
*A Federal expeditionary force under Brig. Gen. Edward E. Potter spent three weeks in April 1865 destroying Confederate supplies and railroad lines around Camden, South Carolina.
