The biggest liberation event in American history?

In the fall of 1864, Gen. William T. Sherman led his army through Atlanta, Georgia, burning buildings of military significance—and ultimately most of the city—along the way. From Atlanta, they marched across the state to the most important city at the time: Savannah.

Mired in the deep South with no reliable supply lines, Sherman’s army had to live off the land and the provisions on the plantations they seized along the way. As the army marched to the east, plantation owners fled, but even before they did so, slaves self-emancipated to Union lines. By the time the army seized Savannah in December, as many as 20,000 enslaved people had attached themselves to Sherman’s army. They endured hardships, marching as much as twenty miles a day.

Review Quote

“[O]ne of the most innovative studies of American emancipation in the Civil War we have ever seen, from the March to the Sea in Georgia and well beyond. An epic tale of movement, of collisions with nature, of military history of a new kind in the annals of American warfare, and of the great human drama—full of loss and tragedy and confusion—of an evolving freedom for former slaves across a vast landscape.”—David W. Blight, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Frederick Douglass

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