In Sherman's wake

NONFICTION

"Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea" by Noah Andre Trudeau. HarperCollins. 688 pages. $29.95.

Bottom line: Mastery of the misery.

William Tecumseh Sherman's "March to the Sea" has been burned so deeply into the American imagination that the mere mention of its commander can still evoke anger in some corners of this state. Under Sherman's command, more than 60,000 Union soldiers marched from Atlanta to Savannah in late 1864, destroying more than 200 miles of railroad, burning buildings, and feeding itself from the bounty of the farms they found in their path. It was a campaign whose purpose was as much psychological as it was tactical. "I can make the march," Sherman wrote before setting the torch to Atlanta, "and make Georgia howl."

With "Southern Storm," Noah Andre Trudeau has written the most comprehensive single volume on this chapter of the Civil War. Trudeau has combed libraries and archives —- official memoirs, unpublished letters, diaries, newspapers —- to produce an account that is unsurpassed in its detail. The result is a scrupulous history, painstakingly accurate in its recitation of troop movements, fighting and the machinations of the generals on both sides of the conflict.

The texture of the book, though, comes from the scraps of observation that Trudeau has collected from more minor players: low-ranking officers, enlisted soldiers and the Georgia citizens fearful of them. "Southern Storm" revels in the language of its primary accounts, such as the terse description of the terrain near Savannah by an Ohio soldier —- "swamp, swampy, and swampier" —- or the assessment of the destruction left in the army's path by an Iowan: "I think a katydid, following our rear, would starve."

"Southern Storm" registers the true complexity of Sherman's mission by attending to its copious details. Sherman emerges as not only a determined, unrelenting warrior but also as a diligent chief executive: studying maps and census data to plan his routes, delegating authority to carefully chosen subordinates, and leading an undertaking that included more than 2,500 wagons and more than 2,000 head of cattle.

In contrast to the clear and steady chain of command over the Union army, Trudeau describes a Confederate leadership in disarray, lacking continuity and coherence at the key moments of decision. While Confederate troops harassed Sherman's trains throughout the campaign, the most successful rebel maneuver involved evacuating troops from Savannah before Sherman mounted a full siege.

Trudeau also seeks to present a more nuanced view of the foraging and looting conducted by Sherman's troops. While there were places that suffered total devastation of their livestock and crops —- "Many of us are utterly ruined," wrote a homeowner in Clinton —- other farmers in the path of the march were able to recover within the year that followed. Trudeau quotes a letter from a McDonough woman to her daughter: "Now I reckon you want to know what the Yankees did for us. Well, bad enough but no worse than I expected." In some places, the Georgians were able to repair the railroad and telegraph damage with relative ease.

The most crucial change that the Union army brought may have been in the relationship between white slave owners and the men and women that they regarded as their property. Slaves along Sherman's route regarded the soldiers as liberators, and thousands tried to follow as refugees. Sherman and his subordinates, however, were largely indifferent to their fate, regarding their African-American followers as a nuisance. In an episode that Trudeau calls a "humanitarian tragedy," one Union general under Sherman's command destroyed bridges to prevent his column from being followed by the newly freed men, women and children. Some of them drowned trying to cross rivers in makeshift rafts.

"Southern Storm" is encyclopedic, a virtue that will also prove daunting to readers who do not already have a command of Civil War history and geography. I recommend reading the book with a detailed, topographic map of Georgia at the elbow. The ones that the book provides are barely adequate, a failing that signals the larger shortcoming of the book.

Caught in the trees of Sherman's campaign, Trudeau rarely raises his head enough to describe the sweep of the whole forest. When he does, though, it is a sight to behold. Like the grand thunderclouds of the Georgia sky, the storm that Sherman wrought was both magnificent and terrible in its power.