In November 1864, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman left Atlanta, Georgiain flames and embarked on his historic Great March from Atlanta to theSea. Along the way, he unintentionally liberated thousands of Blackpeople held as slaves in the Georgia cities and towns. Some joined theUnion lines as hired servants, cooks, laundresses, teamsters, andpioneers. Others joined "for their actual freedom." In numbersreaching tens of thousands, they became Sherman's Fifth Corps, and oneof them, a young ex-slave named Jennie Lewis, became Sherman'smistress.Through actual and fictional letters, diaries, journals, newsaccounts, official reports and for the first time, the words of theex-slaves themselves, SFC tells a story of the man and the March thathas never before been told. Sherman's Fifth Corps reconstructs andimagines what happened when hardened Union soldiers andnewly-liberated Blacks marched across Georgia. They formed anunplanned, unprecedented alliance that brought the end of the CivilWar, the end of slavery, and, literally, a new birth of freedom forthis country.