IT IS BETTER TO DIE FOR FREEDOM THAN LIVE FOR YOURSELF

Won, also freed hundreds-of-thousands of slaves. (really?)

Yep! At the time of the US Civil War, some ~4 million slaves were in the US South. When Sherman’s forces cut through the heart of the American South, every area cleared of Confederate forces was legally free, and Black folk wasted no time in taking advantage of that to reinforce their position of freedom by their own hands, once the slavers were no longer capable of using local government to reinforce their brutal control.

Some simply left their former enslavers’ region entirely, now that there was no apparatus available to stop or hunt them; others formed independent communities in the area to watch over one another. In all cases, the law was no longer on the side of the slavers once Sherman marched through, and he was firm on that matter, at the point of bayonet when needed.

God, there’s a haunting bit in Sherman’s memoirs, give me a second to find it.

After supper I sat on a chair astride, with my back to a good fire, musing, and became conscious that an old negro, with a tallow-candle in his hand, was scanning my face closely. I inquired, “What do you want, old man!” He answered, “Dey say you is Massa Sherman.” I answered that such was the case, and inquired what he wanted. He only wanted to look at me, and kept muttering, “Dis nigger can’t sleep dis night.” I asked him why he trembled so, and he said that he wanted to be sure that we were in fact “Yankees,” for on a former occasion some rebel cavalry had put on light-blue overcoats, personating Yankee troops, and many of the negroes were deceived thereby, himself among the number had shown them sympathy, and had in consequence been unmercifully beaten therefor. This time he wanted to be certain before committing himself…

The incident, luckily, had a happy ending (naturally, since it was Sherman recording it, and not some rebel slaver scumbag) in that it was, indeed, Sherman and the “Yankees” who had come through that time. Not only that, the old plantation itself was being looted of all its ‘fine’ valuables by the Northern troops because they had found out it belonged to a major secession supporter. So they shared some of the looted whiskey with the newly freed man, got the location of one the slaver’s slaver relatives, and had that slaver’s nephew (serving with Sherman as an anti-rebel Union officer) steal the slaver’s horses, lmao.