Review
From the book jacket: In 1864, after Union general William Tecumseh
Sherman burned Atlanta, he marched his sixty thousand troops east through
Georgia to the sea, and then up into the Carolinas. The army fought off
Confederate forces and lived off the land, pillaging the Southern plantations,
taking cattle and crops for their own, demolishing cities, and accumulating a
borne-along population of freed blacks and white refugees until all that
remained was the dangerous transient life of the uprooted, the dispossessed, and
the triumphant. Only a master novelist could so powerfully and compassionately
render the lives of those who marched.
A magisterial work with an enormous cast of unforgettable characters– white and
black, men, women, and children, unionists and rebels, generals and privates,
freed slaves and slave owners. At the center is...
Beyond the Book
For a brief biography of Sherman, see this week's Quote.
The Savannah Campaign, more commonly known as The March to the Sea, took place
between November 15th 1864, when Sherman's 62,000 troops left the captured city
of Atlanta, and ended on December 22nd with the capture of Savannah.
Sherman and Grant were in agreement that the way to end the war was to inflict a
devastating defeat that would destroy not only the South strategically but break
them psychologically and economically as well. To that end Sherman
initiated a "scorched earth" policy throughout the march (which had the added
advantage that it reduced the need for traditional supply lines).
The following is edited from his orders issued on November...
