Smithsonian Fire Destroys Beaufort's Libraries

When the Union captured Beaufort in November 1861, it also captured the contents of the Beaufort Library Society that were stored at Beaufort College as well as the personal libraries of many Beaufort residents. An auction was scheduled for November 17, 1862 but Lincoln's Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase declared "The Union does not make war on libraries" and stopped it. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton -- whose original order to sell the books had started the controversy -- removed the books to the Smithsonian Institution in January of 1863.

Two years later, on January 25, 1865, the Beaufort Libraries collection burned when a stove started a fire in the South Tower of the Smithsonian Institution. Though it was an accident, the damage was not easily undone. Indeed, the confiscation of the town's library materials by the Union occupying forces and the accidental destruction of the materials was a sore spot for more than 75 years.  

 

South Carolina Congressmen and Senators brought the issue up regularly on Capitol Hill.  The situation particularly annoyed Mabel Runnette, Head Librarian of the Township Library, who kept steady pressure on state and federal lawmakers for almost 20 years beginning in 1930. Runnette and many of the Board members felt that the Federal government should either replace the burned books or give the Beaufort Township Library adequate compensation for the loss incurred by the community during the Civil War. 

 

U.S. Representative Clara Gooding McMillan, a middle-aged widow rearing 5 sons while finishing out her husband's term of office, succeeded where powerful political men, including Robert Smalls and William Elliott, had failed. On September 5, 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed "into law a bill directing the Library of Congress to transfer to the Beaufort [Township] library 'books of the same value as those taken by the United States Army when it defeated Confederate forces along the South Carolina coast' during the Civil War" as the clipping from the Charleston Evening Post of August 31, 1940 indicates below. But then World War II intervened. 

 

Eventually in 1950, the library received duplicates and discards from the Library of Congress that were sold off recouping approximately $5000 for the 3182 confiscated and burned titles (many of which were multi-volume works so that the actual number of books and magazines destroyed was much higher). Yet when one reads the Beaufort Township Library's Minutes books, it is obvious that the settlement did not meet the exacting standards of Ms. Runnette. She was still miffed!

You can read more about the Library's fascinating history on our website. Or you can make an appointment to take a deep dive into the Beaufort County Library archival records: 843-255-6446 or gracec@bcgov.net.

 

PS: Mrs. McMillan's youngest sister, Nancy Gooding Guthridge, served as her secretary for a time. Mrs. Guthridge survived her sister by many years and became a long-time volunteer in the South Carolina Room when it was downstairs (what the BDC used to be called before 2001 and before the BDC moved upstairs in 2010).