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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. MacArthur fellow and Bancroft Prize–winning historian Jones (Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow) combines comprehensive research and evocative prose in this study of a Southern city where complex rules of social and economic hierarchy blurred the lines between slavery and freedom well before the Civil War. The prosperous city and labor-intensive rice plantations depended as much on white workers, who tended to be fractious, as on black slaves. At the same time, some blacks, free before the war or emancipated by it, were determined to live on their own terms, economically, socially and, after 1865, politically. But the Civil War brought Northerners into the mix—soldiers, teachers, missionaries, businessmen—motivated by varying combinations of morality and enterprise. After the war, they colluded with Southern whites to keep blacks from attaining full self-determination through conflicts waged in streets and courtrooms, churches and schools and workplaces. Violence and chicanery sustained traditional forms of power, though that power now came through the ballot box and the jury box. With penetrating understanding Jones describes and analyzes the complex processes that impoverished black society but never succeeded in destroying it. 16 pages of photos, 5 maps. (Oct. 9)
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From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Philip Dray "Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and others lived during the Reconstruction period," the African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar once observed. He might have been describing Jacqueline Jones's account of 19th-century Savannah, Ga., where men and women both famous and obscure transformed a resilient Southern city in the years surrounding the Civil War. Jones introduces the voices of numerous slaves, citizens and soldiers as she explores a trove of original sources to create a people's history of emancipation and the vast social changes it wrought. The author, a former winner of the Bancroft Prize, must work at times to stage-manage so wide a range of personages. But grounding her effort is the book's real character -- the city of Savannah itself, a lush, semi-tropical port town known for its mix of slaves, free blacks, plantation gentry and Irish immigrants; its seasonal malarial outbreaks; its splendid mansions and gardens; a waterfront humming with the loading of rice and cotton; and distressing extremes of wealth and poverty. Steeped in Southern custom, Savannah grew anxious at abolition's early tremors. It cheered secession and with patriotic fervor gave its sons to war. After the city was conquered by Union forces in late 1864 -- "I beg to present you as a Christmas-gift the city of Savannah," Gen. William T. Sherman famously telegraphed President Lincoln -- the jubilee of emancipation and the bitterness of defeat gave way to a protracted struggle, as black and white Savannahians adjusted to a world fundamentally changed. Were the South's 4 million freed slaves to have land? Would the thousands of black men who had served the Union under arms -- some of whom, to the discomfort of native whites, now patrolled Savannah's streets -- receive equal rights? And what of the emerging black politicians so integral to the state constitutional conventions mandated by Congress, who -- despite their educational disadvantages and in the face of cruel white caricature -- often proved adept at legislative deliberation and lawmaking? "The white race had never understood or known us perfectly; because we have always dissimulated," state legislator James Simms, an ex-slave, explained at a biracial Republican rally in postwar Savannah. But now, "we want it to be understood . . . we want no bigoted Mayor and no brutal policemen; but we mean to have black aldermen and white aldermen, black policemen and white policemen, and we will mix the colors up like 'rum and [mo]lasses.' " Simms's hopes for racial equality, though girded by Congressional acts and Constitutional amendments, proved premature. Black leaders like Tunis G. Campbell, who established two "homelands" for freed slaves, and the militant lawyer Aaron Bradley, who organized blacks to fight the Ku Klux Klan, showed a determination to save reconstruction in Savannah and the South, but the forces of white reaction soon determined to save the region from them. The restoration of white authority became a holy crusade, and the rest of the United States, increasingly finding its hands full with issues other than the resolution of the freed people's fate, and motivated by an ardent desire for national reconciliation, ultimately abandoned the emancipated race. The result by the 1880s was a Savannah whose racial hegemony looked much as it did before the war. Whites, many prominent, also animate this story: physician Richard D. Arnold, who confronted the mysterious fevers and "miasma" that sickened and killed hundreds in a city surrounded by bays and swamps, years before the mosquito was identified as the carrier of such diseases; Hugh W. and George A. Mercer, high-ranking Confederate officers and the forebears of Savannah's celebrated native son, songwriter Johnny Mercer; planter Pierce Butler, owner of a thousand slaves, whose wife, the British actress Fanny Kemble, was so shocked by the depravity of slavery that she divorced her husband and became an abolitionist, remarking of her Southern neighbors, "I pity them for the stupid sameness of their most vapid existence." The guiding insight of Jones's work is an appreciation of how fully the various stories of the disinherited inform the American narrative. Her depictions of labor conditions on watery coastal plantations, mass slave auctions held in desperation to salvage planter fortunes, and the plight of Union soldiers unfortunate enough to wash up as prisoners in Savannah toward war's end are especially well-drawn. Synthesizing the perspectives of the mercantile elite, the aristocratic upper crust and the downtrodden, she has, in Saving Savannah, fashioned a compelling social and political history.
Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Review
“[A] meticulous recreation of the Civil War in Georgia’s rice kingdom . . . Jones . . . traces this tragic story with thoroughness and sophistication.”
–Kevin Boyle, The New York Times Book Review

“A compelling social and political history . . . The guiding insight of Jones’s work is an appreciation of how fully the various stories of the disinherited inform the American narrative.”
–Philip Dray, Washington Post Book World

“This is a history rich in social detail and written with deep insight, successfully using the life and times of one city and its people to convey the broader outlines of the political and social tensions during the quarter century that encapsulated the Civil War.”
–Michael Kenney, The Boston Globe

“A detailed, compelling portrait of Georgia’s port city from the decade that preceded the Civil War to the decade that followed it . . . [A] dramatic panorama of everyday life in Savannah . . . An intimate look at a city battered by the tides of history . . . Few historians have been able to offer such a comprehensive account of how the men and women of a single city could survive such stormy waters.”
–Michael A. Elliott, The Atlanta Journal Constitution

“Full of complex characters and sweeping drama, Saving Savannah is ready for prime time . . . Jones charges a familiar abstraction–the failures of Reconstruction–with specific, dramatic life.”
–Karen Olsson, Garden & Gun

“A fascinating narrative of the African American experience in the city of Savannah during the second half of the nineteenth century.”
–Library Journal

“An important addition to the literature of slavery and African-American history.”
--Kirkus

“Penetrating . . . Jones combines comprehensive research and evocative prose in this study of a Southern city where complex rules of social and economic hierarchy blurred the lines between slavery and freedom well before the Civil War.”
–Publishers Weekly, starred review

“An important book . . . [an] unusually clear, in-depth portrait . . . of a multi-ethnic, economically diverse and genuinely cosmopolitan Southern city swept up in the maelstrom of the Civil War.”
–Michael J. Bonafield, Star Tribune

“Rich in detail . . . Jacqueline Jones lays bare the lives of whites and the black slaves of the period.”
–Curled Up With A Good Book

“Savannah’s pivotal role in the course of the Civil War and emancipation is a familiar story. . . or so we thought. In this superb study, Jacqueline Jones mobilizes a remarkable cast of characters — black and white, rich and poor, men and women, military and civilian, insider and outsider — to provide a much bigger, richer, and more compelling saga than any we’ve seen before. Jones’s sharp focus on the human dimensions of Savannahians’ wartime and post-war experience ultimately transcends those particularities and allows us to see the larger freedom struggle in moving and meaningful new ways.”
--John C. Inscoe, Editor, The New Georgia Encyclopedia

"Magnificent in its scope, marvelous in its detail, moving in its telling, Saving Savannah is the art of history at its finest. It is a remarkable, wholly compelling study, one with which historians of the American Civil War simply must engage."
--Mark M. Smith, author of How Race Is Made: Slavery, Segregation, and the Senses

Customer Reviews

saving savannah
A brilliant effort. It was difficult to read more than a few paragraphs without feeling a need to stop and think and find someone to share its insights.

Pre- and Post-Civil War Georgia
"Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War" is an exhaustive study of the region around and in Savannah before, during and after the Civil War. It is an examination of the culture and the politics of a place, of which the Civil War occupies the shortest time period. Slavery in fact before the war and slavery de facto after the War are examined. The era of Reconstruction undid the promise of freedom through violence and offical power. A long historical study at over 500+ pages, "Saving Savannah" is a readable account of poverty, power and politics. As a similiar follow-up but based in Mississippi, the reader is referred to "Redemption" by Nicholas Lemann (2006).

EXTRAORDINARY read!
As an avid nonfiction reader, I have been eagerly awaiting this book. I'll say from the outset that I can be quite critical of books, especially those that fail to keep me engaged. This will probably be the most positive review I have EVER written!
It's simple. Saving Savannah is brilliant. I can't remember the last time I read a book that was at once exciting and compelling and also deeply intelligent and thoughtful. The stories stand alone for their entertainment value - you'll get into it no matter who you are. The complex issues of race and politics really got me thinking, so I think this book will appeal to even the most discerning of intellectual readers. Personally, I devour books on the civil war; it's fascinating to read the individuals stories and think about the nuances. This really added something new to the story for me. And thats hard to do.
I felt compelled to write something because I so enjoyed this book. It might just change the way you think about the civil war, or slavery, or how communities rise and fall, or our nation on a broder level. I'd put this on a list of must-reads for american history.
It's very Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Better, in my opinion!