One hundred and sixty years ago, U.S. General William T. Sherman launched his famous March to the Sea, a 250-mile march from Atlanta to Savannah that crushed the Confederacy and helped end the Civil War. But it was much more than a military campaign focused on the soldiers. Protege of David Blight, Bennett Parten, completed his PHD at Yale and in doing so soon published Somewhere Toward Freedom, his dissertation highlighting what we didn’t know of Sherman’s march – 20,000+ freed refugees of slavery were marching at the army’s rear. Not only was Sherman’s fateful March to the Sea representative of the end of the Civil War, but it was also the largest liberation event in American history. From Atlanta through to the army’s arrival in Savannah, Parten addresses the refugee crisis that shaped some of the major questions of Reconstruction, further illuminating how this critical moment in American history has finally been given the attention it deserves. Parten will be joined by author and scholar Vernon Burton, co-author with Armand Derfner of Justice Defered in addition to a number of other books and articles, for a moderated discussion.
If you are unable to attend the event, but would like to purchase one or more signed copies, please visit Buxton Books here.
About the Book
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 of the 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.
In Somewhere Toward Freedom, historian Bennett Parten brilliantly reframes this seminal episode in Civil War history. He not only helps us understand how Sherman’s March impacted the war, and what it meant to the enslaved, but also reveals how it laid the foundation for the fledging efforts of Reconstruction. When the war ended, Sherman and various government and private aid agencies seized plantation lands — particularly in the sea islands off the Georgia and South Carolina coasts — in order to resettle the newly emancipated. They were fed, housed, and in some instances, taught to read and write. This first real effort at Reconstruction was short-lived, however. As federal troops withdrew to the north, Confederate sympathizers and Southern landowners eventually brought about the downfall of this program. Sherman’s march has remained controversial to this day. But as Parten reveals, it played a significant role in ending the Civil War, due in no small part to the efforts of the tens of thousands of enslaved people who became a part of it.
About Bennett Parten
Bennett Parten is an assistant professor of history at Georgia Southern University whose area of expertise is the Civil War period. He is a native of Royston, Georgia, and completed his PhD in history at Yale University. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, Zocalo Public Square, and The Civil War Monitor, among others. He currently lives in Savannah, Georgia.
About Vernon Burton
Vernon Burton is the Judge Matthew J. Perry Distinguished Professor of History at Clemson University and emeritus University Distinguished Teacher/Scholar at the University of Illinois. He has served as president of the Southern Historical Association and of the Agricultural History Society. Burton is a prolific and prize-winning author and scholar (more than twenty books and nearly three hundred articles). One reviewer of his prizewinning The Age of Lincoln proclaimed “If the Civil War era was America’s ‘Iliad,’ then historian Orville Vernon Burton is our latest Homer.” In 2016 he received the Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities from the South Carolina Humanities Council, and in 2021 he was awarded the Benjamin E. Mays Legacy Award. In 2022 he was inducted into the Martin Luther King Jr. Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College, and received the Southern Historical Association’s John Hope Franklin Lifetime Achievement Award.
