Customer Reviews

Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War (Vintage Civil War Library)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War" is an exhaustive study of the region around and in Savannah before, during and after the Civil War. It is an examination of the culture and the politics of a place, of which the Civil War occupies the shortest time period. Slavery in fact before the war and slavery de facto after the War are examined. The era of Reconstruction undid the promise of freedom through violence and offical power. A long historical study at over 500+ pages, "Saving Savannah" is a readable account of poverty, power and politics. As a similiar follow-up but based in Mississippi, the reader is referred to "Redemption" by Nicholas Lemann (2006).

As an avid nonfiction reader, I have been eagerly awaiting this book. I'll say from the outset that I can be quite critical of books, especially those that fail to keep me engaged. This will probably be the most positive review I have EVER written!
It's simple. Saving Savannah is brilliant. I can't remember the last time I read a book that was at once exciting and compelling and also deeply intelligent and thoughtful. The stories stand alone for their entertainment value - you'll get into it no matter who you are. The complex issues of race and politics really got me thinking, so I think this book will appeal to even the most discerning of intellectual readers. Personally, I devour books on the civil war; it's fascinating to read the individuals stories and think about the nuances. This really added something new to the story for me. And thats hard to do.
I felt compelled to write something because I so enjoyed this book. It might just change the way you think about the civil war, or slavery, or how communities rise and fall, or our nation on a broder level. I'd put this on a list of must-reads for american history.
It's very Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Better, in my opinion!

Although purporting to tell the story of the city during the war, the book actually goes far beyond that both geographically, covering essentially the entire coast of Georgia, and temporally, by recounting the years from 1851 until about 1890.

The book begins with a fairly extensive survey of slavery in general and the rice culture in particular, on the eve of the Civil War, describes the effects of the war on Savannah, then addresses the post war struggle between whites and blacks for both political and economic power, which ultimately ended with newly freed slaves politically disenfranchised and economically disadvantaged until the 1960s.

The book was illuminating in a number of ways, first I had no idea that McIntosh County and the county seat, Darien, were black political strongholds until well into the 1890s. I also had no idea of the pre-War wealth of Liberty County. According to the 1850 census, Liberty was one of the wealthiest counties in Georgia. I was also fascinated to see so many familiar family names in the book. I grew up in Liberty County and went to middle and high school with kids named Walthour, Varnedoe, Jones and Gaulden, all family names that figure prominently in the book.

The book does have a few problems. First is lack of a coherent narrative. This is more of a writing style issue than anything else. While the author does a good job of laying out the facts, she is a bit short in synthesizing the overall narrative or story arc from them. This would have been a much better book had she started each chapter with a thesis or generalized summary, then used her facts and anecdotes to support the thesis or illustrate the summary. Of course the reader can do all this from himself, but it makes for a heavy slog of a read. Then there was the issue of maps. There are only five of them. Four of them, the Lloyd's Topographical Map of Georgia", the "Sketch of the Atlantic Coast" the "Defense of Savannah" and "Gen. Sherman's Campaign Map" are useless, either too large a scale with too small a reproduction to be useful (Lloyd's and Sketch) or covering material that is only tangentially referred to in the book (Defense and Sherman's). The Civil War Era Map of Savannah was good, but the book really cried out for a fairly large scale map of coastal Georgia with the locations that figure so prominently in the narrative such as Darien, Butler's Island, Sea Island and the many plantations marked on it. It wasn't a huge issue for me, as I grew up in the area, but I suspect it would be for others less familiar with the area.

Despite those two complaints, this really is an excellent book and it covers its topic very well. I highly recommend it. But, be forewarned, the book assumes at least a basic familiarity with the Civil War in Georgia as well as Sherman's Atlanta campaign and his March to the Sea.

This book should be a must read in all American History classes. Such detailed research and analysis. The professor writes well and knows the details.

A brilliant effort. It was difficult to read more than a few paragraphs without feeling a need to stop and think and find someone to share its insights.

We often see or hear about people who appear to be without conscience. Daily, we read in the news about persons who have criminalized their lives and wonder how they judge themselves human. Of course, the problem begins right there: These misguided destructionists do not consider their acts as evil, as immoral, as against either a natural or divine law. Many of these individuals are labeled criminally insane because "they know not what they do."

The diligently written but unforgettable book, Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War, is about a misguided people who criminalized their very existence by brutalizing African American slaves right here in our own United States where "all men are created equal." The shackling irony of this immoral "in God we trust" behavior went wasted by a population that covered a huge territory, namely the residents of the counties of Georgia and the immediate environs of Savannah itself.

Believing that black Africans were not truly humans, the superior whites treated them much like they'd treat the horse, the donkey, or the mule used to tend their plantations. Since slave labor was cheap compared to labor in the industrialized North, plantation owners thrived. To ensure ongoing wealth, they taught their children, often by horrendous example, how to keep slaves disenfranchised and in their place.

In 1854, Savannah was dying because of an outbreak of yellow fever. Strangely enough, many blacks seemed immune to the mosquito carrying disease. Author Jacqueline Jones mentions that the very trait which made West African groups highly vulnerable to sickle-cell anemia seemed to protect these peoples from malaria and yellow fever. This noticeable immunity bolstered whites' belief that blacks were ordained to labor in the South's scorching, humid, mosquito infested climate.

During the epidemic, both free and enslaved blacks often carried food to infected households. Records in Saving Savannah show that in many instances, they even attended those who could not fend for themselves due to weakness and/or fever. The city of Savannah depreciated. Many stunning homes built by slave labor became unkempt looking. What had been shaded tree lined streets with bountiful flower-filled garden-like squares at two dozen major intersections now became trampled barren eyesores.

To add to the city's severe health problems, a major hurricane came ashore along the Georgia coast interrupting gas service to the city's famous street lamps. Ripping gales and torrential rains tore off roofs and wrought general havoc to many of the finest homes. Life along and on the islands in the lower Savannah River was literally washed away. Animals, owners, slaves, homes, stores of food, cotton and rice crops were obliterated.

It is interesting to note that after many such devastating events, monies were readily obtained to restore Savannah's appearance to its former beauty lest it lose its attraction as a busy commercial port. Thus, far more money was spent on restoration projects than on saving people's lives. Any assumption that slave owners would care for their slaves during a crisis was purely a joke.

Saving Savannah tells how the end of the Civil War brought with it not only the bitterness of defeat for the South, but also the horrendous struggle for four million emancipated slaves. Granting any kind of honest pay for a day's work was unthinkable to plantation owners in Jim Crow South. In the North, black men who had shouldered a rifle for the Union Army found it equally difficult to find work. Whites were unwilling to allow an African American with few skills or training to take a "white man's" job. Emancipation unleashed the fierce fires of prejudice: the KKK; white's only restaurants, stores, hospitals; blacks to the rear of buses, theaters, train cars, hotels and motels; white flight from established neighborhoods because the "Negro" would lower the value of property.

Bigotry is an ugly demon. It dies a sluggish death. It weakens with each passing generation which so adamantly upheld its gruesome righteousness. In the end, it must wait for those prejudiced against, to do the impossible: to "pick themselves up by their own bootstraps" for they would receive little outside help. In the United States, the African American population did just that. They taught themselves and their children to read and write and remain decent; against so many odds, they learned skills needed for jobs at which they became adept or even better than their white counterparts, with lower wages, of course.

With learning came the skill of the tongue that slowly but systematically opened the doors into the political arena. Blacks not only spoke openly about their African traditions in religion, culture, and music; they wrote books about it. In every facet of American life, including two world wars, the African American slowly but effectively infused black power into the national culture.

But in a sense, advancement has occurred logarithmically. In 1851, Thomas Simms, stowed aboard the Gilmore sailing from Georgia to Boston to flee a life of brutal slavery. In 1951, a full one hundred years later, I remember when my own parents took me to Highland Park in Pittsburgh. In numbers, police were there on horseback to maintain order because black folks were daring to enter a white's-only public swimming pool. I remember how whites left the water when blacks jumped in. I recall comments made by my own parents warning me not to drink from a fountain after blacks had used it. In 2010, sixty-nine years later, we have an African American President.

Saving Savannah is a treasure to own and read. Taken from original sources--personal notes, letters, diaries, newspapers, and the like--its uniquely informative story gives an unforgettable panoramic view of life in Savannah before, during, and after, the Civil War. Savannah like so much of America needed to be saved--saved from itself. I would recommend this book to everyone who likes to read historical fiction. I would hope the youth of our nation read it lest they forget the awful price paid by African Americans for their very freedom.

Review written by Regis Schilken
Author of:
Tears of Deceit

Other fascinating books:
Slaves No More: Three Essays on Emancipation and the Civil War (Freedom : a Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867)
Child Slavery in Modern Times (Watts Library: History of Slavery)
The Wanderer: The Last American Slave Ship and the Conspiracy That Set Its Sails
African Americans During the Civil War (Slavery in the Americas)
The Slaves' War: The Civil War in the Words of Former Slaves

I found that the book had too many details and not an easy reading book. I was expecting a book about Savannah to be an easy, reading novel. The author seems to want to impress everyone on her education. Not a book I would recommend to my friends. Just too much details about too many people.

This is a very tedious book. Good non fiction will keep one engaged, this one will make the reader glaze over with boredom.