This outstanding new look at Sherman’s campaign from Atlanta to Savannah in late 1864 and its aftermath is told from the perspective of what happened to the self-emancipating slaves who attached themselves to Sherman’s army. The march, which became the biggest liberation event in American history, was, Parten maintains, a watershed moment in shaping the meaning of freedom in the country.

I have read a number of accounts of Sherman’s march, but all were focused on Sherman’s strategy and tactics and military encounters. In this book I learned so much new, interesting, and important about the history of emancipation and Reconstruction that I constantly plagued everyone around me reading out excerpts.

Parten begins by informing us: “By the time Sherman’s army arrived on the coast, as many as twenty thousand freed people followed - all marching, one soldier would write, ‘somewhere toward freedom.’” These self-liberated slaves acted in a number of helpful capacities for the army, including scouting, intelligence, and performing manual labor - the latter often involuntarily. (They were also frequently forced to entertain the troops at night by singing and dancing.) They served as cooks, laundresses, valets, and teamsters. They dug trenches, constructed earthworks, built roads, and felled trees. Moreover, their knowledge of the landscape proved invaluable to the soldiers.

Sherman and the members of his army had to respond to all those extra bodies in their camps, and the results ranged from salutary to horrifying, as with the massacre of the Black refugees at Ebenezer Creek on December 9, 1864 at the direction of one of Sherman’s unfortuantely but appropriately-named generals, Jefferson C. Davis. At Ebenezer Creek, the rebel cavalry was hard in pursuit, and Davis ordered the bridges destroyed before the Blacks could get across the icy water. All of those at the back of the lines, mainly women, children, and older men, were shot by the Rebels or drowned trying to escape. Col. Charles Kerr of the 16th Illinois Cavalry said in a speech 20 years after the incident, ”As soon as we were over the creek, orders were given to the engineers to take up the pontoons and not let a negro cross. . . . I sat upon my horse then and witnessed a scene the like of which I pray my eyes may never see again." How many women, children, and older men were stranded cannot be determined precisely, but 5,000 is a conservative estimate.

While not as extreme as Davis, Sherman himself was not happy about the extra numbers of Black refugees, seeing them as an impediment to his movements (except of course for the work they did to free up white soldiers from having to moonlight as workmen.) Many of his soldiers as well worried about having to share supplies (in spite of the fact that in many cases they would not have even found them without the help of the former slaves), and others worried that “the collective force of an army that size moving at that [slower] speed made it impossible to police or contain.”

Nevertheless, Parten observed:

“Amid all the threats and shouts, the fear and uncertainty, as if standing in the eye of a storm, freed men and women retained a focused, clear-eyed view of what freedom meant to them.”

He explained that “their vision of freedom centered on things we might take for granted today,” such as the freedom to move from place to place, determining where and how they wanted to live, and possibly finding their family members from whom they were forcibly separated. That basic freedom to move, not constrained by a “master,” was everything to them. But they also realized that this freedom depended on their proximity to the army.

After the march was over upon reaching Savannah, settling the refugees became critical. The task was beset by political as well as logistical problems. Many whites were interested in offering the Blacks nothing more than work on gangs as had been done during slavery. Wages for such work was often withheld, delayed, or lower than promised. Schedules were similar to those used by plantation overseers. As Parten notes, “That was never how freed people had imagined freedom.” They wanted their own homesteads, but whites saw that as a “handout.” (How these people were supposed to get the land on their own was not really considered.) Black advocates tried to explain to the Lincoln government that land was the key to how freedmen could take care of themselves. Not only did it mean autonomy. Importantly, land was inheritable, which meant it had generational value.

Initially, Sherman set aside some 400,000 acres to be distributed to the freedman in equal plots of about forty acres apiece. (His motive was not enlightened; rather, he sought to disencumber his army of the refugees.). But Sherman’s order granted only *possessory* claims to the land, not a full legal title. Northern free Black leaders and abolitionists therefore saw it as “a naked attempt to ‘colonize’ freed people.”

Nevertheless, some 40,000 people eventually settled on that land. . . . for a while. In April, 1865, when the Civil War ended, former slaveholders began returning to their old plantations. Returning planters, Parten points out, “had a powerful friend in the new president,” Andrew Johnson. When Johnson took office, he not only pardoned Confederate planters, but gave them back their land. In September, 1865, freed families were told that the land was no longer theirs. Johnson, Parten avers, “was dead set on rolling back the repercussions of the war and thwarting the pace of change.”

With the army gone, local whites felt they could do what they pleased, and they did. In addition, Union soldiers who were still in the area didn’t like the new status of Blacks vis-a-vis whites, and abuses and even assaults against the freedmen often ensued. The constant influx of refugees, especially during the cold weather, also heralded starvation and disease. But white overseers of relief felt that, as Parten summarized, “to eliminate hardship with too much charity or relief was to undermine the basic market logic on which the project had been based.”

Thus many of the refugees who first joined with Sherman on his march and remained on the coast when he left ended up sick or dead or empty-handed, far from home, and uncertain of freedom.

Those who stayed with Sherman until the end, until his army’s triumphal march in Washington on May 23, 1865, said Sherman’s army was the turning point for them, making all the difference between slavery and freedom.

Alas, as Parten laments in his Epilogue, then came the 1870s, when ex-Confederates, determined to roll back Reconstruction, initiated torrents of violence, personified most memorably by night-riding vigilantes wearing white sheets, burning crosses, and lynching Blacks who tried to exercise their new rights.

Still, Parten avers the legacy of Sherman’s March should rightfully be the redefinition of freedom in America, however unfulfilled its promises came to be.

Evaluation: This is an excellent history that will add a whole different dimension to any library’s Civil War collection, and is also important for the history of race in America. Highly recommended.

An excellent debut book that frames Gen. Sherman’s famous March to the Sea in a new and engaging way.

The March is generally written about in the context of its destruction - of property, infrastructure and the Southern ability and will to fight. But as white Georgians fled ahead of Sherman’s advancing army, the enslaved people who were left behind moved toward the army, and moved with it. And the Southern system of slavery slowly disintegrated with every step taken by the soldiers and their growing group of followers. “Sherman's March has been remembered mostly as the campaign that conquered the South,” Parten writes. But “at some point, the March ceased to be a standard military campaign and took on all the attributes of a social convulsion.”

The March, in effect, was a large-scale fulfillment of the promises of the Emancipation Proclamation. Wherever the army went, the dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of enslaved people who joined their march became free. Some merely followed, others helped the soldiers along the way by working, cooking, cleaning, even providing entertainment in the evenings. But all are given credit here for taking the initiative, for self-emancipating, rather than being portrayed as passive recipients of their freedom.

They had to self-emancipate, after all, because Sherman didn’t necessarily want them tagging along. Among his soldiers and officers, attitudes toward the refugees varied from welcoming to indifferent to outright cruel, such as when soldiers would erect temporary bridges to cross a waterway, then pull them up before their followers could cross, leaving them to fend for themselves, sometimes with tragic results.

What makes this book stand out is that the formerly enslaved who joined the March are the centerpiece of the story and not a mere sidebar as they often are. And while the writing remains accessible without getting abstract or philosophical, Parten also manages to muse on the very meaning of freedom. To those joining the March, the act of moving, of no longer being physically and geographically contained, represented freedom. Where exactly they were headed was not so important, as long as they were headed “somewhere toward freedom.”

For most of them, that “somewhere” ended up being Savannah. That’s where the March to the Sea ended, but for the refugees who arrived along with the army, Savannah represented “not the end but only the end of the beginning.”

That’s because, once there, Sherman determined that his followers could not be allowed to follow him any further. So here, Parten faces somewhat of a narrative challenge, as the book’s protagonists part ways. Do you follow Sherman's army as it heads into the Carolinas, or do you stay with those who followed him to Savannah? He chooses the latter, which is certainly the correct choice in that it allows him to focus on what became of their quest for freedom as Sherman leaves them behind. But the narrative does, as a result, lose some forward momentum, as Sherman moves on and the focus turns to the aims, and ultimate failures, of Reconstruction.

It’s an important focus, though, beginning with some good background on the Port Royal Experiment, initiated years earlier to help set up former slaves to work the coastal South Carolina land that had been abandoned by planters. By the time of Sherman’s March, the experiment was already waning and would soon be overwhelmed by new arrivals when these plantations seemed a natural place to send Sherman’s former followers. This all gave way to the Freedmen’s Bureau, which similarly aimed to help freed slaves help themselves, only to end disappointingly, sending the freedmen and women back inland, searching anew for freedom.

So was their march all for nothing? Once again, the narrative circles back to the question of what exactly constituted freedom and what freedom meant to those who sought it. Was it freedom of movement, freedom of self-determination, equality of opportunity? The title of the book hints at the ambiguity, as the formerly enslaved searched for something, somewhere, hoping for a better life while moving toward an uncertain future.

The rest of Sherman's campaign, and the fact that enslaved people similarly flocked to his lines as he moved through South Carolina, is briefly mentioned in the book’s epilogue, with the tantalizing observation that this lesser-known march may have been “an emancipation event as large as, if not larger than, the March through Georgia,” with no hint as to whatever happened to those involved. So I wish we could have learned a little more about that part of the story.

But overall, I must say that I’ve read a lot of dissertations-published-in-book-form, and many of them tend to be earnest, dryly academic and of little apparent interest to a mainstream readership. This is a welcome exception. It’s extremely readable, well-written, with an occasional casual word or phrase thrown in to keep it from sounding stuffy, and with good character sketches that bring the book’s personalities to life. It’s thoughtful without being ponderous, it has something to say without becoming a screed, and it gives you something to think about without telling you how to think. I believe Parten is one to watch and I look forward to whatever he comes out with next.

I love historical context! Bennett Parten's Somewhere Toward Freedom is a wonderful example of taking a deeper look at a mostly unexplored history event. In this case, Parten is looking at the mass emancipation which happened as General William T. Sherman marched to the sea. This event is certainly not overlooked, but the mass of people who followed Sherman are usually not the focus of the narrative. Parten spends a couple of chapters explaining how the march affected these newly free people and then the aftermath of which I knew very little.

I should mention that I have read a lot about the American Civil War. As such, I didn't need a lot of backstory for Sherman and other major players. I think the book stands perfectly well on its own, but it is worth mentioning that it may lose a little bit for reader's who don't have background for the overall war.

Otherwise, Parten's book is truly exceptional. I especially appreciated the fact that Parten lets the reader feel a bit of pride and hope just like the newly emancipated people of the story. However, Parten also doesn't dispense with nuance or the darker parts of the aftermath. The Union leadership could be just as cold and calculating as any Confederate. Thankfully, there are real heroes to root for including a Union officer who shouldered the responsibility of the Port Royal Experiment. This book has it all and I highly recommend it.

(This book was provided as an advance reader copy from Netgalley and Simon & Schuster.)

Thank you, Simon & Schuster, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I just finished Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman’s March And The Story Of America’s Largest Emancipation, by Bennett Parten.

I was initially unsure whether I should request this book from NetGalley. I am not usually interested in military history, but can occasionally find a book I enjoy on that topic. Something told me that, by also including the emancipation angle, this was going to be a book I could get into. And I was glad that I decided to request this one.

This book focused much more on the emancipation aspect and on the slaves who were getting their freedom by joining the march were treated and faired than the military aspects. There was actually very little, if any, discussion of military strategic maneuvers. Overall, the book exceeded my expectations and was more enjoyable than I had expected.

I give this book a B+. Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, a B+ equates to 4 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews

I originally finished reading this on August 9, 2024.