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Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea
by Noah Andre Trudeau
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Synopses & Reviews Award-winning Civil War historian Noah Andre Trudeau has written a gripping, definitive new account that will stand as the last word on General William Tecumseh Sherman's epic march—a targeted strategy aimed to break not only the Confederate army but an entire society as well. With Lincoln's hard-fought reelection victory in hand, Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the Union forces, allowed Sherman to lead the largest and riskiest operation of the war.In rich detail, Trudeau explains why General Sherman's name is still anathema below the Mason-Dixon Line, especially in Georgia, where he is remembered as "the one who marched to the sea with death and devastation in his wake." Sherman's swath of destruction spanned more than sixty miles in width and virtually cut the South in two, badly disabling the flow of supplies to the Confederate army. He led more than 60,000 Union troops to blaze a path from Atlanta to Savannah, ordering his men to burn crops, kill livestock, and decimate everything that fed the Rebel war machine. Grant and Sherman's gamble worked, and the march managed to crush a critical part of the Confederacy and increase the pressure on General Lee, who was already under siege in Virginia. Told through the intimate and engrossing diaries and letters of Sherman's soldiers and the civilians who suffered in their path, Southern Storm paints a vivid picture of an event that would forever change the course of America. Review: "Trudeau, a prize-winning Civil War historian ( Gettysburg), addresses William T. Sherman's 'march to the sea' in the autumn of 1864. Sherman's inclusion of civilian and commercial property on the list of military objectives was not a harbinger of total war, says Trudeau. Rather, its purpose was to demonstrate to the Confederacy that there was no place in the South safe from Union troops. The actual levels of destruction and pillage were limited even by Civil War standards, Trudeau says; they only seemed shocking to Georgians previously spared 'a home invasion on a grand scale.' Confederate resistance was limited as well. Trudeau praises Sherman's generalship, always better at operational than tactical levels. He presents the inner dynamics of one of the finest armies the U.S. has ever fielded: veteran troops from Massachusetts to Minnesota, under proven officers, consistently able to make the difficult seem routine. And Trudeau acknowledges the often-overlooked contributions of the slaves who provided their liberators invaluable information and labor. The march to the sea was in many ways 'the day of jubilo,' and in Trudeau it has found its Xenophon. 16 pages of b&w photos, 36 maps . (Aug.)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review: "I wish I had a dollar for every time I have had to listen to that blasted tune," William Tecumseh Sherman once remarked. He was speaking some time after the Civil War, and the tune he was referring to was "Marching Through Georgia," which had become the inescapable introduction to every public appearance the famous general made. As Noah Andre Trudeau observes in his exhaustively researched and boundlessly ... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) sprawling account of Sherman's advance from Atlanta to Savannah in November-December 1864, the song embodied all of the simplifications and exaggerations that — much to Sherman's displeasure — became part of the collective memory of "the march to the sea." Amassing a veritable tidal wave of firsthand sources, Trudeau has set out to replace what "everyone knows" with a more nuanced account of this legendary chapter in military history. The picture that slowly emerges from the diaries and letters that crowd his 600-plus pages matches neither the "traveling picnic" that Union veterans recalled nor the scorched-earth visitation enshrined in Southern memory. In later years Sherman always insisted that the march was a means to an end, not an end in itself: a strategic move designed to seize the initiative, to force the enemy to react and to demonstrate that the Confederacy could no longer defend its heartland. Less avenging angel than engineer, Sherman meticulously planned for what was, above all, a vast logistical challenge. He and his staff used data from the 1860 census to calculate livestock and crop production in each county they would traverse and to determine supply needs. And while his army did unquestionably "forage liberally on the country," as Sherman ordered, it also carried with it a huge train of 2,500 supply wagons loaded with bread, sugar, coffee and other essentials, along with 5,000 beef cattle on the hoof to keep his 60,000 men fed for 40 days. The extraordinary demands of crossing 15 waterways were met by a superb engineering team driving wagons packed with pontoon bridges that could be quickly erected and dismantled — and by a lot of backbreaking labor that, in the accounts Trudeau extensively quotes from, make it all sound much more like a slog than a romp. The sources suggest that the destruction visited on Georgia's population was far more circumscribed than popular memory (reflected most recently in E.L. Doctorow's 2005 novel, "The March") has portrayed. Trudeau encountered but a single substantiated account of rape committed by a Union soldier; many diaries and letters refer to measures to keep unauthorized foraging in check; and while farms and their produce were deemed legitimate military targets — as they had been for Confederate troops in Pennsylvania and Union troops in the Shenandoah Valley — guards were routinely posted to protect plantation houses, their families and their personal food supplies while outlying farm buildings and stocks were confiscated or destroyed. In fact, a number of Georgian civilians complained that the Confederate cavalry was worse than Sherman's army when it came to seizing horses and mules and burning and carrying off food stocks. Trudeau's decision to tell almost his entire story through snippets from original sources is both a blessing and a curse. It yields some vivid and fascinating details, such as the picture of two brigades lining up to heave "five miles of (railroad) track at one lift" and Union fury over the Confederate defenders of Savannah employing "torpedoes," as land mines were then known. The great weakness of this approach is that it leads to repetition and narrative incoherence, which is compounded by Trudeau's adoption of a rigid and plodding template. He takes readers through the march day by day, first describing occurrences on Sherman's left wing, then the right, then the cavalry. This makes it extremely difficult to follow the larger flow of military decisions and events (not helped by the book's disappointing maps, which frequently omit key terrain features referred to in the text). Characters appear and disappear with dizzying rapidity, even Sherman failing to emerge as a fully realized portrait; important themes are hinted at but never followed up; contradictions are left unexplained; and after a while many of the quotes from letters and diaries degenerate into little more than perfunctory sound bites ("we got plenty of pork and potatoes"; "the roads were in a bad condition"; "warm work"). Dumping so much raw data leads Trudeau to a good bit of carelessness, as in several places where he reintroduces the same person as if for the first time. The continuing infatuation of many academic historians with theory has, if anything, increased the importance of narrative history of the kind that "Southern Storm" aspires to be. By its very nature, a well-crafted narrative (think of the novelistic style exemplified by such superb military historians as Bruce Catton, Shelby Foote and Rick Atkinson) implicitly brings to light the deeper connections between cause and effect, events and human character, decisions of leaders and experiences of common men and women. Trudeau deserves praise for recognizing the need to revisit in detail this seemingly familiar chapter in American and military history. It still awaits a writer whose narrative gifts equal his or her assiduity in research. Stephen Budiansky is the author, most recently, of "The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox." Reviewed by Stephen Budiansky, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)Book News Annotation: Trudeau, the author of the acclaimed book Gettysburg, now turns his
attention to General William Tecumseh Sherman's historic "March to
the Sea," and how this devastating military operation crushed
Confederate resistance and ruined the economy and culture of the
South for decades. By detailing the planning, execution and
staggering aftermath of Sherman's strategy in Georgia, the author
shows how this destruction was instrumental to Lee's decision to
surrender in Virginia. History and Civil War buffs will appreciate
the many maps, illustrations and photographs, and will understand why
this brutality still fosters resentment below the Mason-Dixon line.
Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Synopsis: Award-winning Civil War historian Trudeau has written a fascinating new history of Sherman's legendary and devastating march through Georgia. Told through diaries and letters of Sherman's soldiers, this work paints a vivid picture of an event that changed the course of America. 16-page b&w insert.
About the Author Noah Andre Trudeau is the author of Gettysburg. He has won the Civil War Round Table of New York's Fletcher Pratt Award and the Jerry Coffey Memorial Book Prize. A former executive producer at National Public Radio, he lives in Washington, D.C.
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780060598679
- Subtitle:
- Sherman's March to the Sea
- Author:
- Trudeau, Noah Andre
- Author:
- Trudeau, Noah Andre
- Author:
- by Noah Andre Trudeau
- Publisher:
- Harper
- Subject:
- History
- Subject:
- Sherman's March to the Sea
- Subject:
- United States - Civil War
- Subject:
- United States / Civil War Period (1850-1877)
- Subject:
- Military - United States
- Subject:
- Sherman, William T
- Copyright:
- 2008
- Publication Date:
- August 2008
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Grade Level:
- General/trade
- Language:
- English
- Illustrations:
- Y
- Pages:
- 688
- Dimensions:
- 9.26x6.42x1.68 in. 2.16 lbs.
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