The March

The March, by E.L. Doctorow, is a 2005 historical fiction novel about General Sherman and his march through the South near the end of the American Civil War. Doctorow tells the story through multiple small vignettes from a multitude of characters, all of whom revolve in some way around Sherman and the strategic decisions he makes. The novel comes near the end of Doctorow’s celebrated career as a writer of historical fiction. His other notable works include Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, and The Book of Daniel. Critics, editors, and librarians alike have called Doctorow one of the most significant American novelists of the 20th century.

The book opens in late 1864 to a scene demonstrating Sherman’s “total war” strategy that targeted Southern plantations and entire cities as well as Confederate soldiers on the battlefield. In the first scene, Sherman’s troops are burning Fieldstone, a plantation in Georgia, to the ground, and looting the house’s contents. The plantation’s owners, John and Mattie Jameson, are already gone, having fled to Savannah. They have already taken their most prized possessions with them. Left behind is Pearl, John Jameson’s biracial daughter with one of his slaves. The light-skinned Pearl, a former slave herself, has nowhere to go with the plantation destroyed, so she follows Sherman and his 60,000 troops as they leave the razed plantation, along with the rest of Fieldstone’s suddenly liberated slaves.

As the soldiers continue to march, following Sherman’s orders that they live off the land—which means robbing and plundering from the places they pass through, leaving rubble and destruction in their wake—their company grows. Those in the South who have nowhere to flee to begin to tag along behind the troops in the final battles and skirmishes of the war. They are unsure of what the future holds for them or what their options are. In Milledgeville, Georgia, Emily Thompson and her former slave Wilma join the march after Emily’s wealthy father dies. Both Emily and Wilma have nowhere else to go. The company is soon joined by Arly and Will, two buffoonish Confederate soldiers who decide to disguise themselves as part of the Union Army.



Sherman spots Pearl but mistakes her for a white drummer boy, perhaps displacing his grief over his own dead son in his error. A Union officer, Clarke, notices Pearl as well, and helps to protect her. After Clarke is killed in action, Pearl finds an unsent letter to his family among his possessions. She decides she will hand-deliver this letter to his family in the North, breaking the news of his death in person and telling them his story.

In the meantime, both Pearl and Emily become assistants to Colonel Wrede Sartorius, a surgeon who is talented but emotionally cold and distant. He has seemingly shut himself off from the horrors of war he has seen and attended to. He carries his medical hacksaw with him everywhere he goes. Eventually, he seduces Emily, but their relationship is as devoid of passion as Sartorius himself. Later, Sartorius is called to Washington, DC to become a personal physician to President Lincoln himself.

When the troops reach Savannah, they spare the city. It becomes the lone exception to Sherman’s “total war” strategy, spared supposedly due to its architectural beauty. In Savannah, Pearl encounters her former owner, Mattie Jameson, and learns that John Jameson has died. Pearl chooses to help the distressed Mattie find her one surviving son and gives her some money to return to Fieldstone and help rebuild it. Afterwards, Pearl forms a relationship with another Union soldier, Stephen Walsh. Stephen seems to truly love her and wants to help her live as a white woman. Pearl has always considered herself black, and is troubled by the choice to push away that identity. Stephen tells her she will have to let the world catch up with her. Passing for white, for now, is her best chance at real freedom.



Meanwhile, Arly and Will continue to tag along behind Sherman’s troops. They meet war photographer Josiah Culp and his assistant, Calvin, who is black. Will is killed, and so is Culp. After their deaths, the surviving Arly decides to assume Culp’s identity. Once he has done so, he embarks on a scheme to assassinate General Sherman while pretending to take his photo.

By the end of the novel, the future is still uncertain for all characters. Arly’s plot fails, and he is caught and executed. Emily strikes out on her own with charitable work at an orphanage. Mattie returns to what is left of Fieldstone. Calvin makes plans to take over Culp’s photography business in Baltimore, where he will have the freedom to do so. Pearl continues traveling north with Stephen, still hoping to deliver Clarke’s last letter and wondering what the rest of her life will hold. The final image is of a fallen soldier, lying in the dirt with one boot and a tattered uniform, the smell of gunpowder slowly fading in the air around him. The war is at an end, but the next steps are unclear. The war has left soldiers and civilians alike with psychological, physical, and emotional trauma. No one is sure how to rebuild or what direction to take in their lives.

The March was met with widespread acclaim and received multiple awards, including the 2006 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction, the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award, and the 2006 Michael Shara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction. The New York Times review observed that while The March upholds the adage that war is hell, it also says something new: “hell is not the end of the world. Indeed, it’s by learning to live in hell, and through it, that people renew the world.”