Parten’s signature contribution to the vast literature on Sherman’s march is to consider it from the vantage of the 20,000 or more refugees who trailed in the wake of his soldiers ... In this, the second and somewhat more derivative half of his book, which is less about the march than about its aftermath, Parten largely focuses on how the 'hopes and failures' of the march persisted ... Once back in session, Congress 'dithered,' or so Parten charges, but that seems not entirely correct. Abolitionists like the Pennsylvania representative Thaddeus Stevens had already been hatching a radical plan to redistribute the wealth of the South: Divvy up the confiscated property and give it to the families of formerly enslaved people and thus effectively overturn the propertied class system that so long had ruled the region.
Parten, as with many aspects of Somewhere Toward Freedom, provides background on Sherman’s attitudes about race and emancipation but not many answers. The general was, like Lincoln and most white Americans, a racist by modern standards but his personal beliefs were not the problems as much as the peculiarities of the war he was fighting in ... well-written, fast, and entertaining. It presents points of view often missed in Civil War studies. The reader could want more, as this work never moves far from providing the basic premise's background, not even defending it.
Parten persuasively argues that the refugee crisis played an unappreciated role in shaping that transition. Tragically, the march’s promise of freedom was largely truncated in the postwar era, and few of the refugees found the freedom they believed they were marching toward. What began as a military triumph ended as a civil-rights failure. This unique look at well-known historical events belongs in all history collections.
