Ruins of Secession Hall

Nothing is left of South Carolina Institute Hall from the Great Fire, save its stark brick walls at 78 Meeting Street, as photographed here in the spring of 1865. This area was about a third of a mile from where the fire broke out on the evening of Dec. 11, 1861. Confederate soldiers stationed at the Charleston Race Course north of the city joined firemen and citizens battling the blaze. Brig. Gen. Roswell S. Ripley, in command, ordered fourteen houses north of Queen Street to be blown up to try to restrict its path. Twenty-three-year-old Emma Holmes anxiously stayed up that night at her mother’s home on Council Street, northwest of the Battery. Later she recorded in her diary recollections of that fiery night. “About one, W[illie] Guerard returned & reported the Institute Hall & Circular Church as burning & cousin Henry [DeSaussure]’s in danger. A light rain was then falling & we earnestly prayed for more, but it only lasted a short time & Rosa [his wife] went home. We heard the roaring & crackling of the flames, the crashing of the roofs falling in. & occasionally the report of an explosion as a house was blown up to try to stop the ravages of the fire.” “Still the flames swept on with inconceivable rapidity & fierceness,” Emma wrote, “not withstanding the almost superhuman efforts of the firemen.”

This is the caption as printed in 100 Significant Civil War Photographs: Charleston in the War. It has not yet been through this site’s research and fact-checking pass.