Even as Sherman was demonized in the South, the black community welcomed him as their liberator. White folks might stare with stony contempt at the endless columns of northern troops striding through their towns, but their slaves, wrote Sherman, “were simply frantic with joy. Whenever they heard my name, they clustered about my horse, shouted and prayed in their peculiar style, which had a natural eloquence that would have moved a stone. I have witnessed hundreds, if not thousands, of such scenes.”
