Ware Sherman: A Journal of Three Months' Personal Experience in the Last Days of the Confederacy

by Joseph LeConte, William A. Blair (Introduction)

Written in scraps and soon afterwards transcribed, this is the journal of a chemist who was trying to remove his family from the path of Sherman's army. William Blair provides insights into the South Atlantic's importance as a food producer and the role of slaves during the war.

Genres: History

Paperback

First published May 1, 1999

About the author

Joseph Le Conte (alternative spelling: Joseph LeConte) was a physician, geologist, professor at the University of California, Berkeley and early California conservationist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_...

Father of Joseph Nisbet LeConte

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is the reproduced journal of a professor who taught at the University of South Carolina and his experiences as Sherman's invasion of the South took place. The author had family who lived near Savannah, so the journal begins with the author trying to reach Savannah before Sherman and his troops do in order to remove and thus safeguard female family members. The author encounters a number of problems and unusual circumstances as he tries to evade capture by Yankee troops while still ensuring his family's safety.

The value of the book is in the honest narration of a way of life and thinking that has been lost to time. It's a rare, authentic first-hand look at how people of the time felt about and reacted to Sherman's invasion. The book has some extreme limitations as well. We are getting only one person's perspective. No matter how intelligent and well-read the author is, he is still a human being with everyday concerns. You will not find in the book any deep thinking about the morality of war, slavery, regionalism, politics, religion, or the meaning of life. Instead, the book is almost a stream-of-conscious narrative about one person's trying to get one thing after another accomplished in serial fashion. Part of the surprise is just how mundane the level of thought was.

If you do not live in the area Joseph LeConte writes about, this book could easily be just three stars because of the limitations just noted. However, I find it particularly fascinating when he mentions going through nearby (to me) Ridge Spring, Batesville (though he doesn't name the town), and then Lexington. He makes a strangely unemotional matter-of-fact comment that when he saw Lexington three weeks later, it no longer existed. Sherman's troops had burnt it to the ground.

There are a lot of nuggets in this diary that help provide a picture of what it was like to live in and around Columbia and Savannah during the Civil War as Sherman marched through.