Sherman's March Through the Carolinas

In retrospect, General William Tecumseh Sherman considered his march through the Carolinas the greatest of his military feats, greater even than the Georgia campaign. When he set out northward from Savannah with 60,000 veteran soldiers in January 1865, he was more convinced than ever that the bold application of his ideas of total war could speedily end the conflict. Before him lay South Carolina, the birthplace of secession. Beyond were North Carolina and Virginia, where Grant and Lee stood deadlocked. John Barrett's story of what happened in the three months that followed is based on printed memoirs and documentary records of those who fought and of the civilians who lived in the path of Sherman's onslaught. The burning of Columbia, the battle of Bentonville, and Joseph E. Johnston's surrender nine days after Appomattox are at the center of the story, but Barrett also focuses on other aspects of the campaign, such as the undisciplined pillaging of the "bummers", and on its effects on local populations. Sherman himself, at the culmination of his military career, emerges here in an appealing portrait. His prewar sympathy for the South and its cause were in conflict with his love of the union and his theory of the least painful way of bringing the war to a conclusion. His unsuccessful attempt to offer the South a peace treaty that would restore the region to its prewar status is masterfully told and invokes a new and sympathetic understanding of the man.