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    Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea
    Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea
    Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea
    Audiobook (abridged)11 hours

    Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea

    Written by Noah Andre Trudeau

    Narrated by Eric Conger

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Award-winning Civil War historian Noah Andre Trudeau has written a gripping, definitive new account that will stand as the last word on General William Tecumseh Sherman's epic march—a targeted strategy aimed to break not only the Confederate army but an entire society as well. With Lincoln's hard-fought reelection victory in hand, Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the Union forces, allowed Sherman to lead the largest and riskiest operation of the war. In rich detail, Trudeau explains why General Sherman's name is still anathema below the Mason-Dixon Line, especially in Georgia, where he is remembered as ""the one who marched to the sea with death and devastation in his wake.""

    Sherman's swath of destruction spanned more than sixty miles in width and virtually cut the South in two, badly disabling the flow of supplies to the Confederate army. He led more than 60,000 Union troops to blaze a path from Atlanta to Savannah, ordering his men to burn crops, kill livestock, and decimate everything that fed the Rebel war machine. Grant and Sherman's gamble worked, and the march managed to crush a critical part of the Confederacy and increase the pressure on General Lee, who was already under siege in Virginia.

    Told through the intimate and engrossing diaries and letters of Sherman's soldiers and the civilians who suffered in their path, Southern Storm paints a vivid picture of an event that would forever change the course of America.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateAug 5, 2008
    ISBN9780061661501
    Author

    Noah Andre Trudeau

    Noah Andre Trudeau is the author of Gettysburg. He has won the Civil War Round Table of New York's Fletcher Pratt Award and the Jerry Coffey Memorial Prize. A former executive producer at National Public Radio, he lives in Washington, D.C.

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    Reviews for Southern Storm

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Trudeau's usual style of daily entries for the five or so weeks of the campaign. Since Sherman advanced in four columns, or sometimes five, there is an entry for each of them on most days. Sometimes there is coverage of the Confederate side, but apparently the records are scanty, compared to Union records and diaries. Also, for most of the march there was not much Confederate opposition, and Savannah was evacuated and surrendered after only a short battle at a peripheral fort. A somewhat revisionist account, downplaying the extent of destruction, but not idolizing Sherman. Gives a lot of credit to his subordinates. The author believes that the most notable accomplishment of this campaign was the logistics, bringing the army through almost entire and in reasonably good conditions through enemy territory, with no supply line (though they carried lots of supplies in addition to foraging), and very difficult terrain, especially through the swamps and flooded rice fields of lowland Georgia.

      I recommend this book highly for those who want a day-by-day account at ground level of the campaign. I do not recommend it to Lost Cause believers or Sherman worshippers. Or to anyone looking for an overview.
    • 4/5
      “Southern Storm: Sherman’s March to the Sea” is the first book by Noah A Trudeau and the second book on William Tecumseh Sherman that I have read. Trudeau has done an excellent job of writing what should be a popular history on an iconic event in the history of the United States, an event that has suffered at the hands of partisan revision at the hands of Southern “historians”. The campaign was brutal, Sherman intended to destroy any military asset in his path and he had his troops foraging to extend the supplies they brought with them. They took any horses needed to replace their worn mounts and destroyed broken down mounts and pack animals to prevent them from later serving the rebels. Did civilian homes burn? Sure some did, it was a windy dry day in Atlanta and Sherman was not going to risk his men fighting the spread of fires. As Sherman said to a complaining rebel prisoner, anyone that starts a war has no right to complain of the violence.

      The book reads like the works of Cornelius Ryan. Ryan attended reunions of World War Two veterans for both sides to collect his personal stories. Trudeau had diaries. He had so many diaries that he was able to reconstruct the weather, he said he had at least six references to the weather from each day. What are future historians going to do? Will they be able to look at old Facebook pages and Twitter feeds?

      There were a few disappointments in the book. The maps could have had a scale on them. I was often wondered were his lines separated by miles or tens of miles. “Special Field Orders #15”, forty acres and a mule, which could be the most controversial aspect of the entire operation was only mentioned in one paragraph. Without prior knowledge of the Special Order a reader would not have a clue what it was about from Trudeau’s work. Even though the subtitle was “Sherman’s march to the sea” I was a little disappointed that the narrative ended with Sherman in Savannah. Sherman and his Army of the West pulled up stakes and marched through the Carolinas and into Virginia, where is that story? The post march history was interesting but can be summed up simply, the north is proud of Sherman and the Army of the West for their brave efforts to shorten the war of rebellion and the south resents hearing about it.

      It was a good read, informative and at times entertaining. I recommend it, as long as 550 pages of text with an extra 200 pages of index, bibliography, and muster rolls does not seem overwhelming. I was concerned about the length, it did take longer than usual for me to finish it but at no time did the book seem to drag or become repetitive which is sometimes a problem when an author has a point they want to make so badly that they are willing to beat it to death. This is not that sort of book but the sparse treatment of the benefits derived from the labors of the African Americans who left their “owners” and volunteered their local knowledge and labor to the Army of the West makes me wonder if anything else was overlooked.
    • 3/5
      Familiar civil war writing style, still informative perspective
    • 2/5
      William Tecumseh Sherman, a general in the Union Army, was best remembered for the long trek that his army made through Georgia in late 1864 from Atlanta to Savannah, pillaging and burning everything in their path and that is what I expected to read about in this book, however, that is not the story that was told here.

      This book repeatedly told how from Atlanta to Savannah this regiment ripped up railroad tracks and that regiment foraged for food getting sweet potatoes and pigs here and sweet potatoes and chickens there, and how this regiment led the way on Wednesday and another on Friday and tiny little scrimmages erupt along this river and that river, oh I it was not forgotten that the telegraph lines were ripped down from this town and then from that town.

      In 700 pages I learned hardly anything new about the "March to the Sea" than what I knew when I started because the author was constantly quoting this soldier and that soldier from this state and that state about how hungry were and how tired. It amazes me that I actually finished this book but I kept getting just a teensy bit of information when dragged me through. Under no circumstances would I recommend this book unless some=one was trying to figure out if a particular regiment was involved in the March to the Sea, otherwise, forget it.
    • 4/5
      This is a good, readable description of the Union campaign through Georgia at the end of 1864. It gives a good sense of what it was like for Sherman's army during the campaign. It is also good giving a sense of what it was like for the white folk in the path of the northerners. It is less good on giving a sense of what it was like for the affected blacks, and for the Confederate soldiers. Overall, good read.