Charleston: The Palmetto City is a 1976 pamphlet republication of an essay of the same name, originally published anonymously by Simms in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in June 1857.[1]  The pamphlet edition of this essay is a facsimile of the original Harper’s piece.  In the essay, a rare example of the author’s travel writing, Simms focused on the architecture and geography of his native city, descriptions that are complimented by detailed illustrations of many of the most significant of Charleston’s buildings and memorials.[2]  While a minor work, the essay ...

           One of the more important, though most-lightly studied, of Simms’s works is Sack and Destruction of the City of Columbia, SC, a narrative recounting of William Tecumseh Sherman’s entry into and occupation of South Carolina’s capital city, and its subsequent destruction in the waning days of the Civil War.  Simms originally published Sack and Destruction serially in The Columbia Phoenix, “a small newspaper edited by Simms that commenced publication in the waning weeks of the Confederacy” from the newspaper’s first edition until 10 April 1865; after the close of the War, ...