year they were repurchased by a Mr. Rhyner and sent back to Charleston, where they continued to voice the people's joy or woe until the war between the States, when they were sent to Columbia for safe keeping. When General Sherman burned that city in 1865, two of the bells were stolen and the rest were so injured as to be useless. Once again the bells were shipped to England, where they were recast by the successors of the firm which had made them in 1764, from the same patterns, and again returned to Charleston and replaced in the belfry on March 21, 1867.
The church has been commemorated in the popular lyric of Mrs. Stansberry, How he Saved St. Michael's, though as a matter of fact it was the spire of St. Philip's that was saved from fire by an heroic negro. Timrod, during the war between the States, refers to the church in one of his tenderest poems entitled, Christmas, and Simms, when the steeple was made a target for Federal guns, published his passionate lines beginning:
"Aye, strike with sacrificial aim,
The temple of the living God,
Hurl iron bolt and seething flame
Through aisles which holiest feet have trod!"
