'General Sherman's Christmas' captures the war-time holiday in Savannah 150 years ago

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4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 25 December 2024

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

During the Civil War, Union Army Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman and his troops arrived in Savannah, Georgia, days before Christmas in 1864. The city was their final stop on Sherman's March to the Sea, a military campaign to weaken Confederate power through the state of Georgia. Stanley Weintraub's 2009 book, General Sherman's Christmas, explores the holiday celebration in the war-torn city. In today's episode, we revisit a conversation between Weintraub and NPR's Guy Raz about Sherman's controversial reputation and how they tied twigs to the heads of mules to turn them into reindeer.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh, and Merry Christmas. If all is going
0:07.6	according to plan by the time you are hearing this, I should have a pretty serious stomach
0:12.7	ache from eating like three cinnamon rolls before I've had any real breakfast, you know,
0:17.0	as is the family tradition. But if all is not going according to plan, well, you know,
0:22.6	you find a way to make do with what you got, which is, if you think about it also part of the
0:26.7	Christmas tradition, you know, with the baby in the manger and all of that. Anyway, I wanted to
0:31.2	tell you about a book that's all about making do during Christmas. It came out in 2009, and it's
0:37.0	called General Sherman's Christmas by historian Stanley We out in 2009, and it's called General Sherman's Christmas
0:38.7	by historian Stanley Weintraub, and it tells the story of Civil War General to Comsa Sherman,
0:44.1	and his wartime Christmas spent in Savannah camped out with the rest of his troops as part of his
0:49.2	march to the sea. And in this interview with NPR's Guy Raz, Wynchrop talks about how the troops did what
0:55.2	they could to make it Christmassy and why to this day you can find a house in Savannah marked
1:00.7	Sherman's headquarters. That's ahead. In the U.S., national security news can feel far away
1:07.8	from daily life. Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.
1:13.5	On our new show, Sources and Methods.
1:15.6	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people
1:18.9	helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
1:23.1	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:28.3	A few days before Christmas, 1864, Union Army General William Tecumseus Sherman sent a dispatch to President Abraham Lincoln. Mr. President, it read,
1:38.8	I beg to present you as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, also
1:46.6	about 25,000 bales of cotton. That's author Stanley Weintraub reading from his new book, General Sherman's
1:53.0	Christmas. It's the story of Sherman's March to the Sea, from Atlanta to Savannah, that
	...

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