NEWS: Sherman's Fifth Corps will be published in print in late Fall 2008. If you want to reserve a signed first edition, leave a comment or email the author at jabarnes937@gmail.com
In November 1864, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman left Atlanta, Georgia in flames and embarked on his historic March from Atlanta to the Sea. Along the way, he unintentionally liberated thousands of black people held as slaves in the Georgia cities and towns. They left the farms and plantations in droves--some joining the Union Cause as hired servants, cooks, laundresses, teamsters, and pioneers, and others determined to make their own way as free citizens of the United States. They were Sherman’s 5th Corps, and one of them, a young ex-slave named Jennie Lewis, became Sherman's mistress.
Through actual and fictional letters, diaries, journals, news accounts, official reports and for the first time, the words of the ex-slaves themselves, Sherman's Fifth Corps tells a story of the man and the March that has never before been told.
Beginning November 1864 and ending January 1865, each entry in this blog presents a daily account of the Great March, told in the words of the people who were there. From their individual reports, we can reconstruct and imagine what happened when hardened Union soldiers and newly liberated blacks marched across Georgia and formed an unplanned, unprecedented alliance to bring about the end of the Civil War, the reconstruction of the Union, the end of slavery, and a new birth of freedom for this country.
You can read the book in its entirety on this blog. Start here.
Sherman's Fifth Corps
A Civil War Novel
Dramatis Personae
William Tecumseh Sherman, 44, Union Army Major General, commander-in-chief of the Great March from Atlanta to the Sea.
Virginia “Jennie” Lewis, 18, newly-free young Georgia woman hired by the Union army as an assistant to General Sherman’s cook.
General Sherman’s Staff & Union Officials
L. M. Dayton, Aide-de-Camp, Acting Adjutant General
Major Henry Hitchcock, Assistant Adjutant General
Capt. George W. Pepper, minister, member of Sherman’s Staff
Brigadier General Jefferson C. Davis, Commander, 14th Corps
A.C. McClurg, Assistant Adjutant-General and Chief of Staff to General Davis
Brevet Major George Ward Nichols, Aide-de-Camp
Daniel P. Conyngham, War Correspondent, New York Herald
Henry W. Halleck, Army Chief of Staff
Manuel, the general’s Negro cook
Union Soldiers
Major James A. Connolly, 123rd Illinois Infantry; Capt. James Laughlin Orr, 42nd Indiana Regiment; Pvt. Charles W. Wills, 8th Illinois Infantry; Captain R. Cruikshank, 123rd New York Infantry Regiment; Lt. Colonel S. Merrill , 70th Regiment, Indiana Volunteers; Cornelius C. Platter, 81st Ohio Infantry Volunteers; Captain James M. Randall, 21st Wisconsin; Theodore Upson, 100th Indiana Infantry; Rev. G. S. Bradley, Chaplain, 22nd Wisconsin; Harvey Reid, 22nd Wisconsin; Major Fredrick C. Winkler, and others.
Confederate Officers & Officials
Brig. Gen Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard
General John Bell Hood, Confederal commander
Maj. General Joseph Wheeler, commander of confederate cavalry
General Howell Cobb, Commander of the Georgia Troops
T. B. Roy, A. A. Genl to Lt. General Hardee
James. A. Seddon, Secretary of War, Confederate States of America
Robert Toombs, Commander of a Georgia Brigade
Joseph E. Brown, Governor of Georgia
R. D. Arnold, Mayor of Savannah
General William Hardee, Commander of Confederate Forces, Savannah
Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of Ameria
Jennie’s Family
George Lewis, Jennie’s father, seaman on the Union steamer, the Planter
Isabella Lewis, Jennie’s mother
Aleck Jones, Jennie’s cousin, servant to Maj. Hitchcock
Caroline Lewis, Jennie’s sister
Southern Women
Mary Ann Hale, Mrs. Louise Neal, Lizzie Perkerson, Anna Marie Cook, Carrie Berry:; Dolly S. L. Burge; Mrs. Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas; Miss A. C. Cooper; Ella Mitchell; Mrs. L.F.J.; Sue Sample; Nora M. Canning; Ella Wilson; Frances Howard; Fanny Cohen Taylor, Eliza Frances Andrews
Others
Ellen E. Sherman, wife of William T. Sherman
Rev. James Lynch, Rev. Garrison T. Frazier, Rev. G. C. Quarles, Negro ministers in Georgia
Robert Smalls, Negro caption of The Planter
Thomas Maguire and other Georgia Citizens, black and white, named and anonymous, who participated in and were liberated by this Great March.
Want to read the novel from the beginning? Go to the "First Time Visitor" instructions and blog Archives to the left.
