Simms describes the streets of Columbia as “wide and greatly protected by umbrageous trees set in regular order, which during the vernal season confer upon the city one of its most beautiful features.”

The Daily South Carolinian was sent to Charleston to save it from destruction.  Its editors, Julian Selby and Henry Timrod, remained in the office on the south side of Washington Street near Main, where they prepared and sent out a daily bulletin while bomb-shells fell around them, until their labors were ended by the burning of the building.

From the ashes of the Carolinian arose the Phoenix and Simms was its editor through its somewhat brief existence.  Selby relates that Simms offended General Hartwell and was summoned to trial at the General’s headquarters on the corner of Bull and Gervais Streets.  The result of the trial was an invitation for the defendant to a sumptuous luncheon and a ride home in the General’s carriage accompanied by a basket of champagne and other good things.  The next day the General told a friend that if Mr. Simms was a specimen of a South Carolina gentleman he would not again enter into a tilt with one.  “He outtalked me, out-drank me, and very clearly and politely showed me that I lacked proper respect for the aged.”

The Phoenix promptly sank back into its ashes and Simms returned to Charleston to a life of toil and struggle, not only for his own livelihood but to help others bear the burden of existence that was very heavy in Charleston immediately succeeding the war.  Timrod wrote to him, “Somehow or other, you always magnetize me on to a little strength.”

In 1866 Simms visited Paul Hayne at Copse Hill, the shrine to which many footsteps were turned in the days when the poet and his little family made life beautiful on that pine-clad summit.  Hayne welcomed his guest with joy and with sorrow—­joy to behold again the face of his old friend; sorrow to see it lined with the pain and losses of the years.

Of all their old circle, Simms was the one whose wreck was the most disastrous.  He had possessed so many of the things which make life desirable that his loss had left him as the storm leaves the ruined ship which, in the days of its magnificence, had ridden the waves with the greatest pride.  The fortnight in Copse Hill was the first relief from toil that had come to him since death and fire and defeat had done their worst upon him.  His biographer says, “He was as eager as ever to pass the night in profitless, though pleasant, discussions when he should have been trying to regain his strength through sleep.”  To a later visitor Paul Hayne showed a cherished pine log on which were inscribed the names of Simms and Timrod.