“The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl” by Eliza Frances Andrews

In late 1864, Eliza Frances Andrews (1840-1931) began keeping a journal. The young woman lived with her father and younger sister in Washington, Georgia, a town due east of Atlanta between Athens and Augusta. Washington had been fortunate, but William Tecumseh Sherman’s army was approaching as it swept southwest from Atlanta to Savannah in the famous “March to the Sea.” Their father has been a known opponent of secession, but Eliza’s two older brothers had both enlisted in the Confederate Army. 

The two young women traveled to the home of their older sister, who lived on a plantation in southwest Georgia near Albany. Initially opposed to their leaving, their father finally relented, and the family found friends and acquaintances who could serve as escorts.

 

First, however, they had to cross the some 60-mile swath that had been in the path of Sherman’s army. And it was every bit as bad as they’d heard. Destroyed railroad track, burned towns, villages, and homes, the countryside picked clean of anything resembling food – the sisters were as stunned as they were outraged.

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"Sherman's March to the Sea" by John Marszalek

Many events of the American Civil War would reverberate and be remembered for decades afterward – the Battle of Gettysburg, the siege of Vicksburg, and the firing upon Fort Sumter among them. But few had as lasting an impact as Sherman’s March to the Sea.

In September 1864, the army of General William Tecumseh Sherman captured Atlanta, an important Confederate city and transportation hub. In addition to giving President Lincoln a significant election campaign boost, the fall of Atlanta disrupted the South’s rail system and posed the possibility of dividing the Confederacy east of the Mississippi (the fall of Vicksburg had already severed the eastern and western halves of the South). 

General William Tecumseh Sherman

In Mid-November, Sherman began to move his army of 62,000 men in three columns from Atlanta eastward toward Savannah. This became the lore of “Sherman’s March to the Sea,” hailed in the Union and reviled in the South. The army had no effective opposition, and about three weeks after the march began, the Confederates abandoned Savannah to the oncoming Union army. 

Those three weeks would loom large for decades after the war. What the Union army did and didn’t do would become an integral piece of the South’s “Lost Cause” story, used to justify Jim Crow laws, “separate but equal” arguments with schools, and a host of other actions an programs. 

In Sherman’s March to the Sea, historian John Marszalek takes a look at what happened. He evaluates what evidence exists from official records, reports in Northern and Southern newspapers, diaries, and other sources.

Marszalek considers why Sherman decided on the march, one that would cut his army off from supply lines and force it to live “off the land;” how the march was organized and went forward; what happened to the towns; farms, and plantations in the path of the army; what happened to the slaves on those farms and plantations; and whether Sherman achieved his objective of eliminating a supply base of food and support from the Confederate armies. 

The general met his objective; the march dealt a mortal blow to Southern psychology and supply lines. Unintended if to-be-expected results, however, included untold misery on the civilian population, white and black alike. Union soldiers who strayed too far from the advancing to pillage and loot were often caught and hanged by Confederate troops. Reprisals would follow, sometimes on civilians. Farms were stripped of livestock and food supplies, and buildings burned. 

Marszalek devotes two chapters to what happened to the slaves. As the federal army moved through the countryside, slaves abandoned their owners and attached themselves to the army. Sherman had expressly forbidden the “contrabands,” as they were called, to do this, but try telling that to people long enslaved getting their first taste of liberation. Disillusion at ill treatment by the federals soon developed, but thousands of people kept following the army eastward. While food was plentiful, like it was in the early days of the march, Sherman companied about the contrabands but did nothing to stop them. But the food situation worsened as the army moved more eastward into areas where food supplies and livestock were less plentiful. 

John Marszalek

At Ebenezer Creek, one corps used a pontoon bridge to cross. Some 650 liberated slaves, many of them women and children, were held back, until the bridge was cut loose and floated down the creek. The people threw themselves into the creek, trying to get across. A Few succeeded; others drowned. Most were left on the shore, where they were quickly rounded up by Confederate troops. Reports of what happened quickly surfaced in Washington, where they were used by Sherman’s political enemies. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton sailed to Savannah to see for himself and met with local black church leaders, who supported Sherman.

Marszalek is professor emeritus at Mississippi State University, where he taught courses in the Civil War, Jacksonian America, and race relations. His published works include Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order, Court Martial: A Black Man in America, Commander of All Lincoln’s Armies: A Life of Henry W. Halleck, A Black Congressman in the Age of Jim Crow: South Carolina’s George Washington Murray, and several others.

The following years would see Sherman lionized in the North and reviled as Satan incarnate in the South. Legends grew up about the march, and it’s not easy separating fact from Lost Cause propaganda. Sherman’s March to the Seamakes the attempt, even as the author’s sympathies lie clearly with Sherman.

Top photograph: Sherman’s soldiers destroying a railroad in Atlanta.

“Sons of My Fathers” by Michael Simpson

This is a story of one family and two wars separated by 100 years. The two wars happen to be the most divisive in American history – the Civil War of 1861-1865 and the Vietnam War which ended in 1975, but began either in the 1950s or the 1960s. It is a novel, but it is a novel so based on historical and real family events that it could almost be non-fiction. One of the main characters is actually the author.

Welcome to Sons of My Father by Michael Simpson.

Simpson tells two stories in this book. One is set largely in 1864, when Simpson’s small farmer ancestors (they were not slave owners) find the entire family caught up in the Civil War as both soldiers and non-combatants. After capturing Chattanooga, General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Union army is advancing on Atlanta.

The countryside is in chaos – advance Union patrols, retreating Confederate soldiers, roaming bands of deserters and even criminals. Baylis Simpson has four sons fighting for the South and a daughter, son, and granddaughter at home. A band of deserters or criminals happens upon the two girls; the daughter is raped and the granddaughter is murdered. Baylis, on leave from the Georgia Home Guard for planting, tracks them down, and exacts revenge, the rapist meeting a particularly gruesome death. Baylis and one of his sons will then find their army units and discover themselves at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, the last hurdle before Sherman can take Atlanta.

This is the South in the Civil War. Lawlessness everywhere, law and order breaking down, farms often stripped of anything edible and women and children left to starve.

The second story starts in the early 1960s. Three boys – Alex Granger, Ron Simpson, and Ron’s younger brother Michael – are the closest of friends. Alex grows up with the Simpsons almost as a member of the family. His own father is dead and Ron and Michael’s father Harold, a veteran World War II Marine, helps to raise him.

The boys get into the kinds of pranks and escapades that boys often did in the 1960s. But as Alex and Ron graduate from high school, they decide to enlist in the Army. And what’s hanging over both of them is the Vietnam War.

Michael Simpson

Moving back and forth between the two narratives, Simpson paints a picture of the effects of war, the divisiveness of war, and the tremendous stresses that families experience in wartime. He also paints a picture of what happens when a highly trained helicopter pilot, understanding what happened with the My Lai Massacre, decides he can’t participate in the killing of the enemy. (This is based on a historical situation involving Ron Simpson, one that went to trial in federal court in Atlanta.)

Michael Simpson is a screenwriter, director, and producer of documentaries and feature films. His credits include the movies “Crazy Heart” and “Kidnaping Mr. Heineken” among many others. This is his first novel.

Sons of My Fathers is gripping, moving, and eye-opening. It tells the story of how the idea of duty and honor infuses families down through the generations. And it tells what happens when duty and honor collide with conscience.

Photograph: A Monument to Illinois soldiers who fought at Cheatham Hill, also known as the Dead Angle, the location where Simpson’s Confederate ancestors helped to hold off the Union Army advance for five days.