Customer Reviews

To the Sea: A History and Tour Guide of the War in the West, Sherman's March Across Georgia and Through the Carolinas, 1864-1865 (Civil War Explorer Series)

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

 

 

Miles has done a great job with this book. He includes countless examples, both good and bad, of encounters between Yankee soldiers and the people of Georgia. If you want to know more about the personal side of the March, as well as the dates and places, this is certainly the book for you.
A teacher could easily use "To the Sea" as a text for a course in the March alone. The margins are wide to provide plenty of room to write notes. Thank you Jim Miles!! I will not hesitate to buy another book by this author.

READERS BEWARE The author of "To the Sea" is from Georgia and an apologist for the Confederacy and slavery, so everywhere in this book you will read of poor Southern whites dislodged from their comfortable homes while vicious, callous Union soldiers rampaged with General Sherman boasting of his destruction (which was untrue altogether, and the author knows this but he couldn't stop himself building sympathy for slaveowners). Slavery is never mentioned, and infamous Andersonville prison camp is named once only because it was in the vicinity -- no word about its atrocities, that other side of Southern hospitality. Nothing said about black people welcoming their freedom and Sherman. In Atlanta, Sherman required people to evacuate the city, which was the chief weapons manufactory, and even called a truce and provided a train to deliver them to a Confederate-held town behind their own defense lines -- the author reports this but all of his commentary are on the suffering of these whites/slave-owners riding a train in the cold nighttime with only their clothes and what they could carry. Contrast that to Southern hospitality at Andersonville -- but the author never does. Just white children and women and old folks beat down by an invading army in the cold of night. (Besides, this is Georgia in the South, not Georgia in Russia where it actually does get cold.) Two months after Sherman departed Atlanta heading for the sea, Atlanta was humming again as a munitions center for the South. The author reports this but only in terms of how their gracious Southern lifestyle was despoiled by mean, uncaring Sherman. The facts reported in the book are good, the contempt for the Union cause is despicable: May the South -- and its antebellum civil rights -- rise again, it says.