The General Who Marched to Hell: Sherman and the Southern Campaign

by Earl Schenck Miers

The Man the South Still Hates As a boy, Sherman hung a cat nine times to be certain it was dead. As a general, he launched a campaign of vicious destruction against an exhausted South. It follows. Often depressed, sometimes on the verge of suicide, he was a case history of over-compensation. Ergo, overkill was his modus operandi. To his men, Sherman was an indestructible and infallible leader. The press vilified him. In Washington, he was underestimated, but Grant knew his worth. Miers reveals the tormented soul who dealt the coup d'grace to the South.

Genres: History, Civil War, Military Fiction, War

369 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Earl Schenck Miers was an American historian. He wrote over 100 published books, mostly about the history of the American Civil War. Some of them were intended for children, including three historic novels in the We Were There series. Miers received honorary degrees from Lincoln College and Rutgers University.

On 17 November 1972, at the age of 62, Miers died at his home in Edison, New Jersey.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

The General Who Marched to Hell: Sherman and the Southern Campaign gets 3 Stars for a concise, thoughtful account of Sherman’s Southern campaign. You will recognize the precursor to Ken Burns The Civil War as Miers uses the contemporary accounts of participants on both sides to relate the campaign’s progress. From soldiers and officers on each side to civilians (like Mary Chesnut, a young 10 year-old diarist, Carrie Berry, in Atlanta, a 17-year-old observer in Columbia SC, etc), politicians and many others we get the Southern campaign in their words. I found this book, written in 1951, to be quite fair and balanced. Good and bad are recounted for both sides. While most of the book is concerned with the military campaign, there are occasional asides on the larger political struggle. The spring/summer of 1864 was not going well for the Union. The Battle of the Wilderness, Cold Harbor, New Market, etc were racking up Union losses. The Democrats were offering a peace platform that would have ended the war and left slavery in place. Lincoln and the Republicans/National Union Party carried on a war that shed massive amounts of blood. Shortly after the Democrat convention ended, Sherman’s capture of Atlanta provided a much-needed victory at a crucial time.

This war was certainly unique. It was a battle between brothers with all the love and hate that can engulf a family. After a bloody battle against Cheatham’s forces near Kennesaw Mt, the armies call a truce to collect the dead and wounded:

Details from both Armies were made and gathered up the dead, of which there were a great many, and at suitable places buried them. The Confederates in one, our men in another big grave—side by side, wrapped in their blankets. Our graves were marked by a piece of board from hard tack boxes with name, Company, and Regt where we could make them out—which we could not always do. Their watches or other articles of value [were] taken charge of by an officer to be sent home. A prayer was made by a Chaplain of either Army and the graves filled up. After this was done we filled in the rest of the time allowed with visiting between the officers and men of both Armies, all showing kindly interest in each other. When the gun was fired that announced that the truce was ended we parted with expressions of good will such as:

“I hope to miss you, Yank, if I happen to shoot in your direction,” or “May I never hit you Johnny if we fight again.” All went back to their lines and in a short time the pickets were merrily popping away at each other.

At this point in the war, tactics had evolved to include rapidly fortifying the lines whenever there was a chance. It was a real struggle to get the units to attack fortified positions. Dwight (a Harper’s Weekly reporter) described what it was like to attack an enemy behind his breastworks:

You make up your mind to assault the enemy’s work. You have formed line of battle, with a second and third line behind you for support. You march forward filled with the determination to accomplish the object, yet feeling the magnitude of the undertaking. Two hundred yards brings you to the picket-line, and here the opposition commences. You dash across the space between the two lines, you lose a few men; and the enemy’s pickets, after making as much noise as possible, run back to their main works. By this time the enemy are sure you are really coming, and open on you with artillery, besides a pretty heavy fire of musketry. This artillery throws the shells screaming through your ranks, producing more moral than physical effect, or throws shrapnel which, bursting in front, scatter myriads of small bullets around. You commence to lose men rapidly. The ball is opened. “Forward, double-quick!” again; and while the whole line of the enemy open fire from behind their works your men, mindless of this—mindless of the death intensified, the bullets and the shells, they dash on with wild cheers.

The abàtis with its tangled intricacy of sharpened branches snares your line. Tripping, falling, rising to fall again, the men struggle through this abates…though the moments are drawn out interminably, and though in each step are left brave men to pay for the ground. You get through a part of you and still rush on: the firing grows more fierce and the men grow more desperate. Your three lines have been almost reduced to one, and you strike another line of abatis. In this abatis are the palisades which must be uprooted by force before a man can pass. You stumble, fall, tear your flesh on these stakes, and here stop to pull them up—stop, when every instant is an hour—stop, when you are already gasping for breath; and here open up the masked batteries, pouring the canister into that writhing, struggling, bleeding mass—so close that the flame scorches, that the smoke blinds from those guns Is it any wonder that your three lines are torn to pieces, and have to give back before the redoubled fire of an enemy as yet unimpaired comparatively? And then the slaughter of a retreat there! Oftentimes it is preferable to lie down and take the fire . . . until night rather than lose all by falling back under such circumstances.

I enjoyed this book because it took you past Sherman’s March to the Sea at Savannah. The “Hell” refers to the burning of Columbia, SC which occurred when Sherman marches north from Savannah through South and then North Carolina. South Carolina was singled out for special treatment and pillaging as the place where the Civil War had started. Where Georgia had exaggerated the depredations of the Yankees, South Carolina did not. But the South Carolina story is not often told.

[Greynomad · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am willing to bet that you will find any monument to Sherman in the South.......
Just who was the best Union General of the Civil War......Grant or Sherman????

[Graceann · Rating 4 out of 5]

An in-depth and even-handed account of Sherman's infamous March to the Sea. I read this in preparation for my first trip to Georgia, wherein I followed The March, and it, along with Jim Miles' "To the Sea," was an excellent primer, not only on the March itself, but on the man behind it.

[Bevan Audstone · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good history from the early 20th century. Worth reading for all the original sources the author uses.
Downplays the awfulness of the destruction of the march but gives a good context for the war, the generals and fighting.