Youre making me think about this, and i love this. This is the thing you may not te audiences and although what ive said is a compilation of what all of the historians and this is a consensus to a large extent on much of this now, but you may not buy any of it, but what i hope is that you will never look at this man and this march in the same way. Before i step away from this podium its an honor to be here with so many distinguished historians and so many great people, Richard Murray and you started the day out with the best and you started the day out with bud robertson and you ended it with the least, as far as im concerned. So thank you very much. Donald trump and Hillary Clinton made the conventions a mustsee on tv. This morning we will show you the featured speeches from cleveland and philadelphia. You will see democratic speeches by michelle obama, bernie sanders, bill clinton, joe biden, michael bloomberg, tim kaine and the acceptance speech by Hillary Clinton and sunday morning
Atlanta. Both times he was greeted as a hero. Many atlantans said thank you for taking the torch to our Downtown Business area and getting rid of it. Weve been able to rebuild. The phoenix has risen. This is the symbol of atlanta is the phoenix rising. And so he was greeted as a hero by. People. It wasnt until the lost cause and the development of that narrative really kicks in in the late 19th century early 20th century that sherman becomes demonized to the extent he was. Theres a great book. I have my list of books and i figured somebody would ask me whats good to read. One of them that i would recommend to you is a book by Ann Sarah Ruben called through the heart of dixie, and looks at shermans march and the memory of how it develops on both sides. Another great book is called shermans march in myth and memory. They explore this is phenomenon of what sherman comes to represent. From their argument, he comes to represent everything thats the antithesis of the cavalier society. Its th
60 miles across from one end to the other as it goes out to the sea. She said in reality it was more like fingers of destruction. Stitches through the landscape. Because the army was advancing down roads. And most places they stayed a day. If that much. So the destruction, the destruction is limited to how far off the roads they can go. So she said there are vast areas in between those roads. That were untouched by it. And those people of course applied food and help to the other people who had lost so much during the march. Its interesting, because i had not even thought about this. We do have this image of tsunami of fire going across and if fact it really is more like fingers of destruction going across georgia. Yes, sir . People in the valley recognized that sheridan not only planned, organized and carried out zonal destruction, so this was an order of destruction. And it was very thorough, although theres many other phases to it. But thats different than what happened in georgia.
Becomes that, i think the term they use was the wind. This wire and wind that came through georgia. Sarah reuben made an interesting point about the destruction itself. I thought it was interesting, i left it out of my talk. She said we have the sense of the march to the sea as being the giant tidal wave this tsunami. 60 miles across from one end to the other as it goes out to the sea. She said in reality it was more like fingers of destruction. Stitches through the landscape. Because the army was advancing down roads. And most places they stayed a day. If that much. So the destruction, the destruction is limited to how far off the roads they can go. So she said there are vast areas in between those roads. That were untouched by it. And those people of course applied food and help to the other people who had lost so much during the march. Its interesting, because i had not even thought about this. We do have this image of tsunami of fire going across and if fact it really is more like
Really just sort of scratched the surface out here, and theres a lot more information potential with this site. Its very unique, particularly for this area, the midatlantic region. You dont typically see slavery being practiced on the scale that it was being practiced here at leramie taj. I think i mentioned that 90 slaves is roughly 10 times the number of enslaved individuals you would have expected to be living here. So thats an extremely unusual circumstance for this area. You know, like i said, they are about 20 x 34 feet. Thats just under 700 square feet of living space. If in fact there were only six structures total, one can assume there were somewhere between maybe as many as 12 or 15 People Living in each these dwelling houses which probably sounds like a lot, so i i would i would guess or assume that these may have been extended family units, for example, living together. Multiple generations of families. Like i say, these are pretty utilitarian, simple, expediently construct