SOMEWHERE TOWARD FREEDOM

Vigorous history of Sherman’s March to the Sea, viewed less as a military campaign than as a “veritable freedom movement.”

When William Tecumseh Sherman’s army arrived at Atlanta in 1864, it found itself a magnet for thousands of enslaved people who left surrounding plantations and found refuge among the blue-clad soldiers. By Georgia historian Parten’s count, something like half a million such enslaved people crossed into U.S. lines. Sherman was not enthusiastic about them, less interested in emancipation than in crushing the secessionist rebellion. As Parten writes, Sherman was even less interested in the prospect of enlisting Black soldiers in the Union army: “With Atlanta within reach and the end of the war coming into view, he held that now wasn’t the time to insert new soldiers into the mix. He also couldn’t let go of the idea that enslaved people would serve the army best as laborers.” Though Ulysses S. Grant held similar views, urging Sherman to send Black men north to Virginia to build siegeworks around Richmond, the army finally relented and enrolled Black soldiers—an important step in later securing full citizenship rights. Parten examines and dismantles certain myths about the March to the Sea, discarding the “lost cause” view that Sherman had unleashed savage war on the civilian population; instead, he holds, Sherman reserved his wrath for the slaveholders and the Confederate military—which, at one critical battle, turned out to be “little more than a sad assemblage of old men and young boys.” Parten also uncovers some unsavory aspects of racism among the Union forces, including one general’s habit of pulling up bridges so that the train of formerly enslaved people who followed after him would not be able to cross—which, in one horrific instance, led to the murder of many at the hands of rebel fighters.

A well-known episode in Civil War history viewed from a fresh, and illuminating, perspective.