Bennett Parten

“Traditionally, we’ve only ever seen the March as a military campaign. What we’ve missed is that Sherman’s army cut a path through the state of Georgia wide enough for freed people to begin putting the pieces of freedom together.”
― Bennett Parten, Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman's March and the Story of America's Largest Emancipation

“His home and store happened to be in the same building as the old A. Bryan’s Negro Mart turned schoolhouse, which meant that before the war he had spent his nights listening to the cries of enslaved men and women on the verge of being sold. “It was hell, sir!” he told Charles Coffin, who took a shine to Houston and his story. “The wailings of the damned can never be more heart-rending,” he added, noting that the worst was hearing mothers cry for their lost children and listening as traders shuffled bonded men and women up the stairs, their chains clanking as they went.40”
― Bennett Parten, Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman's March and the Story of America's Largest Emancipation