Marching With Sherman

For those of you hoping to read my review of William Sherman’s Memoirs, I must apologize due to no fault of my own.  Before I ramble on much longer, it is time to discuss the primary source I managed to read, Marching with Sherman by Henry Hitchcock.  Hitchcock was Major and Assistant Adjutant General of Volunteers who served with General William Tecumseh Sherman during his infamous Savannah Campaign.  This book is an account of Hitchcock’s experiences during said campaign.  The sources used for the book are Hitchcock’s letters and campaign journal.  Currently, I am using this book in my HIS 450 term paper that is about Sherman.  This book is a fascinating read for anyone looking for a telling of Civil War events in what I can only label as close to real time as possible.  This is not the only source of its kind but it is one that should not be forgotten. 

As far as actual material published in this book, I am drawn to not the overall progress of the campaign but the little things that Hitchcock describes.  I find it interesting when he talks about what he ate and all the people he meets.  I am captivated by these little things because they illustrate the “human” side of the Civil War.  They offer to me an insight that the men who fought and died were not just one dimensional characters that are out of a pulp novel, but human like me.  As far as the details related to the campaign; my only reaction to said details is “wow”.  None of the textbooks or secondary sources that talk about the destruction of the Savannah campaign truly capture it the way Hitchcock captures it.  “First bursts of smoke, dense, black volumes, then tongues of flame, then huge waves of fire roll up into the sky: presently  the skeletons of great warehouses stand out in relief against and amidst sheets of roaring, blazing, furious flames…”  Most textbooks would sum such a quote up in a robotic and emotionless description that would fail to express what it would mean to have seen it and to have lived it. 

Another aspect that kept me enthralled was Hitchcock’s portrayal of Sherman.  The Sherman that Hitchcock served under does not sound like the Sherman that most secondary sources tend to discuss.  The description of Sherman that Hitchcock gives is of a man that is actually quite likeable.  He describes Sherman as “kind-hearted, nay warm hearted man, thoughtful and considerate of the feelings and scrupulously just and careful of the rights of others”.  This clearly is not the work of an Atlanta native, nor is it the work of a Confederate sympathizer.  While I was reading other descriptions of Sherman by Hitchcock, I began to see Sherman in a new light.  Prior to this I saw Sherman as a taciturn “stick in the mud”, who held a deep grudge against the south.  This book has helped me gain an overall new opinion and view of who Sherman was.  While the sections on Sherman are not vast and carry with them descriptive lines that would amaze John Grisham, they do help the reader gain some understanding of what Sherman was like. 

Overall, I would recommend this book to any and every Civil War aficionado, whether their interest is just the simple and mundane facts to those “hardcore” individuals who starve themselves before reenactments.  This book helps to paint a picture of what campaigning with Sherman during his March to the Sea from the mundane events of marching from place to place and the tragic destruction that is war.  Even though the events portrayed in this primary source are anecdotal, it helps to broaden the horizons on how we see events in our nation’s past.  My horizon has been broadened and I feel it gives a better understanding of one of our nation’s darkest times. 

Hitchcock, Henry. Marching With Sherman: Passages from the Letters and Campaign Diaries
of Henry Hitchcock Major and Assistant Adjutant General of Volunteers November 1864-May 1865. Ed. M. A. DeWolfe Howe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1927.