When Major General William Tecumseh Sherman began his March to the Sea on November 15, 1864, many Georgians greeted the Union armies as deliverers from slavery. Nearly 466,000 Georgians were Black, 44% of the total population. Of those, only 3.500 were Free Colored, The rest were slaves. In his new book Somewhere Towards Freedom: Sherman’s March and the Story of America’s Largest Emancipation, Benett Parten describes the emancipation of tens of thousands of Georgians during this campaign. In his opening chapter, Parten recounts the story of Sally, a freedwoman, looking for her children in the wake of Sherman’s army.
We know what happened to Sally because of John Potter. He was part of Sherman’s army and after the war he wrote a memoir of his time in the army. He was from Illinois where he was active in campaigning for Lincoln in the 1860 election. After the attack by Confederates on Fort Sumter, Potter enlisted in the 33rd Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment but his father had his name stricken from the rolls of the regiment because he was too young to enlist on his own. The next year, Potter was able to gain parental consent and in August of 1862 he again enlisted, this time in the 101st Illinois Infantry. The unit was assigned to Grant’s army during the Vicksburg Campaign and then followed Grant to Chattanooga. Next it participated in the Atlanta Campaign.
Potter was in Atlanta when the March to the Sea began. Like many in the Union army, Potter noticed a difference in the attitude of Georgians to the advancing Union army. He wrote in his memoir that “The colored people appreciated our presence, but the disloyal whites, where they presumed to give us an audience at all, looked on us and our operations with grim despair depicted on their countenances.” While many of the white Georgians fled their homes and either went to areas held by Confederate forces or hid themselves in the back country until Sherman’s forces had passed by, Black Georgians welcomed the Northerners. Potter says that “Many of the negroes thought ‘the year of Jubilee had come,’ and struck out and marched to the sea with us.”
A Black couple joined the army at Atlanta. Potter says that; “There was another colored man named Ben, who came to us at Atlanta and drove one of the headquarters teams of the 20th corps.” His wife also found work with the army. “His wife, Sally, cooked for one of the officers,” says Potter.
While Potter did encounter one Black man who stayed “loyal” to his master, all of the other Blacks he met welcomed freedom. Potter recounts that Sally and Ben “had always been slaves, but elated at the thought of freedom, they started out with the army.” Their family had been taken away from them and sold over the previous years. For example, their daughter Nan had been sold more than a decade ago when she was eight years old. They hoped that they would now be free, but also wanted freedom for their kidnapped family members, including Nan. This might have seemed like wishful thinking to the soldiers they told their story to, since Ben and Sally “did not know anything about them” after they were taken away from them.
As the army moved south, Black refugees began to come into the nightly camps that the Union army set up. Potter says that “When the freed men began to flock to our camps, old Aunt Sally would scrutinize them very closely to see if any of them were her children, and inquire for any clue whereby she might hear of them or perchance find them.”
Sally told Potter that Nan was taken away from her and was relocated to “the lower country,” exactly where Sherman’s army was marching towards. She asked so many times for clues as to where her daughter might be that it caught everybody’s attention in the unit. Potter writes that “Her interest and inquiry was so intense that a good many of the soldiers knew about it. I thought, however, as it had been so long, and slaves were bought and sold so frequently and taken from state to state, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.” An eight year old girl might soon forget her parents over the decade when she did not see them, and she might be changed in appearance or have a new name as she grew up making her unrecognizable to her parents.
As the army approached Savannah, a couple came into the Union lines seeking refuge. They said they wanted to “go to Massa Linkum” to help win the war. The husband’s name was Joe. When Joe addressed his wife as “Nan,” a man who heard it went to tell Sally about what how Joe had addressed his wife. Sally was cooking supper for her “mess.” Her informant told her that a couple was camped nearby and that the husband had called his wife Nan.
Sally, Potter writes, “threw down her cooking utensils and raised her hands and said ‘de Lord be praised, I know its her,’ and flew to where they were. Joe, of course, did not have any knowledge of her, and perhaps the girl had forgotten her mother, and as they saw her making toward them they just stared at her and wondered what was the matter. The sight of them checked her somewhat and to assure herself she began to make inquiries about them, ‘[where] dey war from and how long dey [lived] thar.’ Nan said she lived about thar, she reckoned, ’bout ten year. She was born up de country near Atlanta, and when she [was] little her massa had fetched her down thar. The old auntie could not stand it any longer, she just screamed, ‘uan’s is my chile, I knows uan’s is; I’se looked for you all de way down, an’ bless de good Lord, he’s sent uan’s to me.’ The girl, too, recognized her mother and in a little while they were in each others arms, embracing and kissing and shedding of tears, and slapping each other on the back accompanied with joyous screams, raised a commotion in the camp.”
The Union soldiers saw what had happened and they had been hearing every day of Sally’s search for her family, and so they reacted. Potter wrote that “The soldiers, hard as they seemed to be, were wonderfully moved when they knew what it all meant.”
Of course, Sally was not the only parent. Potter described what happened next; “Then Ben came and the scene was repeated, all three hugging together and jumping up and down till they seemed exhausted. It was the most powerful demonstration of human emotion I ever saw; some laughed and others cried as they witnessed these exuberances of joy at finding each other again. Aunty was so nearly overcome that she nearly forgot the supper she had so hastily left. It was scantier than usual and very late, but the officer, when he knew what had detained her and made his supper less in quantity, readily forgave her.”
Ben and Sally were lucky that they found their daughter Nan. Nearly one million Blacks had been sold by their white owners in the years preceding the Civil War, many to new cotton plantations in Mississippi, Arkansas, or Texas. And what happened to Ben and Sally’s other children and other relatives? Many freed slaves spent years trying to find their parents, spouses, children, and siblings. Even as late as the 1920s ads appeared from former slaves looking for relatives they had not seen for sixty years.
In her new book Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families, Judith Giesberg says that chances of finding loved ones separated by slavery were nearly impossible. Did Sally and Ben give up their search at the of the end of war, or did they continue it for the rest of their lives?
While many think that Reconstruction began with Lee’s surrender in April of 1865, it actually began when slavery ended for each individual African American. Then they could begin making decisions that would affect their families for the rest of their lives.
Happy Black History Month.
Sources:
Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families by Judith Giesberg published by Simon and Schuster (2025)
Somewhere Towards Freedom: Sherman’s March and the Story of America’s Largest Emancipation by Benett Parten published by Simon and Schuster (2025)
Reminiscences of the Civil War in the United States by John Potter published by The Globe Presses (1897)
Note: in Potter’s memoir I left in the original spelling of Black people’s dialogue contained in the book except where it was difficult for the modern reader to interpret. The changes are in brackets.
This illustration was published in Harper’s Weekly on April 2, 1864. It was created by Thomas Nast, the immigrant German cartoonist. It is titled “General Sherman’s Rear-Guard.” This illustration was drawn half-a-year before the March to the Sea. It shows African Americans coming into Union lines with many Blacks assisting Union soldiers and caring for the wounded.
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